EXTINCT AND EXISTING GLACIERS OF COLORADO 35 



broad zone of crevassed ice, the crevasses differing little in appearance, 

 though quite distinct in origin, from the crevasses in the lower portion 

 of the glacial stream. It is not strange, then, that difference of 

 opinion may arise even among experts, concerning the propriety of 

 applying the name glacier to many of the smaller ice-bodies of the 

 Rocky Mountains and other western mountains. Not only newspaper 

 and popular magazine writers, but also quasi-scientific writers, such 

 as Muir, and geologists, such as Russell, have applied the name to 

 many bodies of ice which most glaciaHsts would refuse to recognize 

 as glaciers. 



Notwithstanding the difficulties, some sort of a definition seems 

 necessary. In the Alps, conditions were such that the need of a 

 refined definition was not pressing. In the Sierras and Southern 

 Rockies, where glaciers of large size are rare or altogether wanting, 

 and where there are thousands of neve remnants and glaciers bordering 

 upon extinction, the need of exact definition seems urgent, but the 

 search has been vain. Russell's discussion^ admits the unsatisfactory 

 results of an attempt to define accurately the term. 



Emmons,^ in criticizing Muir's and Russell's work and objecting 

 to Stone's designation of the Hallett ice-mass as a glacier, says (pp. 

 215-16) that a symposium of the members of the Washington Philo- 

 sophical Society was called to consider the matter of a definition prior 

 to the pubhcation of Russell's report, but that "no definition was 

 offered which met with universal approbation." Emmons' own 

 definition in the same paper (pp. 217-18), to enable one "to decide 

 in a given case whether to call it a neve-field or a glacier," seems as 

 deficient as any in this respect. His suggestion that it must be a 

 stream of ice "contracted into a relatively narrow channel between two 

 more or less parallel walls" certainly did not help matters. The 

 phrase "relatively narrow channel" is as indefinite as any other 

 definition, and when he requires confinement between two more or 

 less parallel walls he emphasizes a character which seems wholly 

 unimportant. Why should a stream of ice ten miles long which 



• Russell, Israel C, "Existing Glaciers of the United States," Fifth Ann. Report of U.S. Geol. Sun., 

 pp. 309-13, 1885; Glaciers of North America, Ginn & Co., pp. 1-17, 1901. 



' Emmons, S. P., "On Glaciers in the Rocky Mountains," Proc. Colo. Sci. Soc, Vol. II, pp. 211-27, 1888. 



