GENERAL MEETING. 5 
245TH MEETING. JANUARY 19, 1884. 
The President in the Chair. 
Forty-five members and guests present. 
The Chair read a letter from the Biological Society of Washing- 
ton inviting the members of the Philosophical Society to attend 
its meeting of January 25th, for the purpose of listening to the 
annual address of its President, Dr. C. A. White. 
Announcement was made of the election to membership of 
Messrs. GEORGE Epwarp Curtis and Patrick Henry Ray. 
Mr. I. C. RusseLt made a communication on 
THE EXISTING GLACIERS OF THE HIGH SIERRA OF CALIFORNIA. 
[Abstract. ] 
During the summer of 1883 I had an opportunity of tracing to 
their sources some of the ancient glaciers of the High Sierra in 
the region between Mono Lake and the Yosemite Valley. 
From the glacial records seen during a number of excursions 
into the mountains it was evident that the High Sierra had formerly 
been so deeply covered with ice that only the culminating peaks 
and ridges escaped the general glaciation. From the vast névé of 
the mountain tops flowed long winding rivers of ice, both to the 
eastward and westward through the cafions and valleys. In nearly 
all cases the glaciers occupied drainage lines of pre-glacial date, 
which they modified and enlarged, but, with the exception of the 
cirques about the higher peaks and crests, they failed to originate 
any of the more prominent topographical features of the range. 
The glaciers of the Sierra Nevada were not connected with a north- 
ern ice-sheet, but were of local origin and of the same type as the 
Swiss glaciers of the present day, but of far greater magnitude. If 
the cafions and valleys of the Sierra are traced upward, it is almost 
invariably found that they head in cirques or amphitheaters, in 
some of which small glaciers still linger—perhaps remnants of the 
mighty ice-rivers that formerly flowed from the same fountains. 
The first glacier visited by the writer was on the northern side of 
Mt. Dana, at an elevation of about 11,500 feet above the sea, and 
at the head of a deep cafion which drains into Leevining creek, 
19 
