12 Canon Bonney — Moraines and Mud-streams in the Alps. 



the right bank, where there are imperfect pillars, the material seems 

 to be connected with a wide tributary opening, rock appearing 

 opposite to it on the left bank of the river. In the neighbourhood 

 of the pillars (about half a mile below Useigne) the material 

 certainly shows some stratification rudely parallel with the slope 

 of the hill, as in a talus. " It is morainic, not moraine — hillside 

 talus, mud, torrent debris, moraine, perched blocks, all sorts of stuff 

 brought down by rain and stream. It looks as if the valley, after 

 having been excavated to something like its present depth, had 

 been choked up with this mixture."^ The way in which it is 

 distributed, not in mounds, but forming parts of the slopes 

 descending from either side of the valley, shows that it cannot be 

 true moraine. 



The earth pillars near Stalden have a similar origin. These occur 

 on the right bank of the Vispthal, roughly opposite to the steep 

 ascent on the railway before it reaches that village. I came to the 

 conclusion, more than twenty-five years ago, that this material had 

 descended from above, and have been confirmed in it by later study, 

 especially during the past Summer. The pillars have been carved 

 out of a pale grey ' earth,' more or less micaceous, containing some 

 small fragments (but less numerous than in a moraine) with 

 occasional boulders (crystalline rock), now and then large. The 

 annexed diagram, rough though it is, will save a long description. 



Fig. 1. — Section kight bank op Visp neae, Stalden. 

 A, mouutain side, steep and rather bare, rising for some hundreds of feet and 

 forming the skyline ; B, cultivated ground, forming a kind of shelving terrace ; 

 C, long slope, with rock showing in the steeper part, on which streamlets 

 (sometimes dry) have cut ravines, on the flanks of which are pillars ; D, cliffs 

 above the Visp. 



The terrace bank, thus furrowed, extends for some hundreds of 

 yards, and bears no resemblance in form to a moraine either lateral 

 or terminal. But it is not the only instance. Part of Stalden 

 stands on a mound of similar material, through which the railway 

 cuts just before entering the station. At first sight this more 



1 Note written on the spot in 1900, when I saw them again after an interval of 

 twenty-four years. 



