360 WILLIS T. LEE 



can be neglected. Considering, then, only the masses of snow 

 immediately outside of the moraines, the quantity indicates that it 

 must be due to several years' accumulation. In some cases the 

 extra-morainal masses are several hundred feet wide and, judging 

 from the topography, must be forty feet or more in depth. 



Turning to an examination of Fig. 2, there is less recent snow than 

 appears in the western lobe, and a larger portion of the old ice is 

 exposed, perhaps because this lobe descends considerably lower than 

 the western lobe. The nose of the glacier is here pushed hard upon 

 the moraine, so that the front of the ice and the moraine form a 

 single slope. The loose morainal material is accumulated in a steep 

 slope, with its base forming a comparatively sharp outline with the 

 rock on which it rests. The relations are such as strongly to suggest 

 that this lobe of the glacier is overriding its terminal moraine and 

 dropping the fresh material at the front. 



During the summer of 1883, I. C. Russell photographed this 

 glacier, and his photographs were published in the Eighth Annual 

 Report of the U. S. Geological Survey. Twenty years later, 

 during the summer of 1903, G. K. Gilbert secured photographs of 

 the same glacier and published them in the Bulletin 0} the Sierra 

 Club, in an article entitled, "Variations of Sierra Glaciers." In 

 comparing his photographs with those of Professor Russell, Mr. 

 Gilbert says: 



The glacier seems now to have almost precisely the same size as at an earlier 

 date, the only suggested change being a slight shrinkage near the west end. The 

 arrangement of the numerous moraine ridges is precisely the same as in 1883, 

 from which it may be inferred that the glacier has not in any later year been 

 materially larger than then. It might, however, have diminished and afterward 

 increased. 



Later he observes: "Lyell Glacier was quite as free from snow in 

 the summer of 1883 as in 1903." 



From a comparison of Russell's photographs, taken in 1883, 

 Gilbert's, taken in 1903, and the writer's, taken in 1904, it is evident 

 that little change has taken place since 1883. All the main features 

 are the same. Careful comparison, however, indicates that small 

 arms of ice reaching up the rock faces are slightly larger than they 

 were twenty-one years ago, and certain small areas of rock, which 



