50 UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO STUDIES 



phenomena in various portions of Colorado. More recent reports 

 by various geologists have appeared in the publications of the United 

 States Geological Survey and the Journal of Geology, so that now the 

 existence of glacial phenomena on a very large scale is well known, 

 and some progress has been made even in the determination of two 

 or more distinct periods of glacial extension and retreat. It would be 

 expected that recognition of actually existing glaciers of small extent 

 would be still more tardy. Miss Dartt,^ now Mrs. Nathan D. Thomp- 

 son, who lived in Boulder at one time and was familiar with Arapahoe 

 Peak at least from a distance, wrote in 1879: "For reasons belonging 

 to the province of physical geography, we have no glaciers, and the 

 perpetual snows of our lofty mountains are gathered into vast fields 

 or banks in places where the rocks or contours of the ground pro- 

 tect them from the warm west winds." RusselP in 1885 said: "No 

 true glaciers have been discovered south of Wyoming." 



In 1886 Comstock^ wrote: "Existing glaciers in the Wind River 

 Mountains and in the San Juan Mountains enable us to witness the 

 actual production of these peculiar effects," but he gives us no further 

 information concerning them or their exact location. 



The first definite description that I have been able to find of a 

 still active glacier or glacier-like body in the state is in 1887, when 

 Stone"* described the ice-field known as Hallett Glacier. This led 

 to Emmons' discussion^ in which he concludes that it "is most probably 

 the last remnant of the neve of this glacier, and could hardly be called 

 a Hving glacier with strict regard for scientific exactness." 



The present decade has been much more prolific. Fenneman and 

 Lee have described Arapahoe, Mills has reported several active 

 glaciers in the neighborhood of Long's Peak and northward, and 

 Siebenthal has described two in the Sangre de Cristo Range. One 



' Dartt, Mary, On the Plaim and among the Peaks; or How Mrs. Maxwell Made Her Natural History 

 Collection, Claxton, Remsen & Heffelfinger, Philadelphia, p. 150, 1879. 



' Russell, Israel C., "Existing Glaciers of the United States," Fifth Ann. Rept. U.S. Geol. Surv., for 

 1883-84, p. 344, 1885. 



' CoMSTOCK, Theo. B., "Some Peculiarities of the Local Drift of the Rocky Mountains," Science, Vol. 

 XX, pp. 925-26, 1886. 



« Stone, G. H., "A Living Glacier on Hague's Peak, Colorado," Science, Vol. X, pp. 153-54, Sept., 1887 . 



s Emmons, F. S., "On Glaciers in the Rocky Mountains," Proc. Colo. Sci. Soc, Vol. II, pp. 211-27, 1887 . 



