300 Capt. Marshall Hall—Glacier Observations. 
Recently the Alpine Club has formed such sub-committee, and is 
about to appeal to the authorities. A Memorandum drawn up by 
the President, Mr. Douglas W. Freshfield, and which we subjoin, 
will be sent with each letter, in the hope that officers, surveyors, 
and explorers will be induced to give us their valuable aid. 
The Memorandum in question only deals with the more pressing 
requirements as to ice-movements, etc, as it was not wished, in 
beating up recruits, to alarm such by too formidable an amount of 
work. 
With regard to the suggestion in its last paragraph it will be as 
well to caution surveyors that, if a row of stakes is made use of, 
they should be of good size and planted deeply; surface ablation 
is rapid in hot weather, and Herr Escher von der Linth, having, on 
July 8, 1841, inserted stakes in holes 3 feet deep on the Aletsch 
Glacier, found, on August 16 (39 days later), all the stakes fallen, 
and no trace of the holes. Where available, rocks on the glacier 
surface, even though not likely to be in a straight line, are the best 
for surveying purposes. Even they have a bad habit of tumbling 
into crevasses! Mr. Brodrick, of the New Zealand Alpine Club, is 
early in the field, having determined the position of a considerable 
number of carried rocks near the lower end of the Mueller Glacier, 
and written an able account of ice-motion in the southern New 
Zealand Alps. 
Readers of the Grotocican Macaztne are little likely to take 
alarm if we mention a few additional points upon which facts would 
be of value, amongst others, some more especially in relation to the 
_ recently revived discussion of the part borne by glacier erosion in 
the formation of lakes. During sundry seasons the writer spent 
much time, without success, in attempts to find lakes indubitably 
produced by glacier action. Nevertheless, other men familiar with 
the ice-world may be more fortunate, and it is only just to dis- 
tinguished supporters of the Ramsay theory that we should use our 
best endeavours to provide them with evidence. 
We never remember to have seen terminal moraines of importance 
which are not, or have not been, cut through by the issuing torrent. 
In the case of the Mattmark See, in the Saas district, the lake was 
dammed back by the lateral moraine of the Alalin glacier, which, 
within the writer’s memory, traversed the valley nearly at a right 
angle; but the glacier has retreated, and ten years ago the valley 
was so silted up that the lake was little more than a shallow pond. 
The evidence as to the pace of the same glacier at different heights 
is none too copious, whilst the motion of the névé and of the snow 
masses which feed the ice is very little known. We look upon this 
last as almost new ground to break. 
Professor F. A. Forel has recently caused lead plates, engraved 
with date, etc., to be buried near the summit of Mont Blanc. 
The comparative amount of rocks and of detritus resting upon 
glaciers, and of that which has found its way beneath, and the 
amount removed by torrents from beneath ice, are difficult points 
which we recommend to good calculators more especially. Dr. A. 
R. Wallace especially draws the writer’s attention to this. 
