328 Prof. Struder on Bowlders. 



that of Chamouni. This theory rests principally, if not exclusively, 

 on observations made in the vallies of Valais, Savoy, and Vaiid, 

 The appearances in the Aar-valley are less favorable to it. We 

 see around Berne not only the dechvities on both sides of the 

 valley but the valley-bottom itself covered with blocks, and these 

 are not in any respect, as we have just seen, accordant with glacier 

 ramparts. Moreover, on the plateau of Langenberg and Belp- 

 berg, elevated nigh a thousand feet above Berne, bowlder almost 

 strings itself to bowlder ; the whole surface of these hills, which 

 lie in the midst of the Aar-valley, is thickly strewn with blocks, 

 and although here and there we may suppose ourselves to have 

 observed a linear accumulation like the Swedish osar,* yet is 

 the direction of these ramparts usually parallel with the direction 

 of the valley ; they appear to be the remnants of an earlier de- 

 trital coating mostly carried away by later streams, and not mo- 

 raines.f Moreover, in the upper Aar-valley, in the region of 

 Meiringen, exist facts, which if not in direct opposition, are yet 

 not in the desired conicidence with the glacier theory. There, 

 too, we see no old moraine. The blocks occur at very different 

 heights ; they have been transported high over the Brunig, indeed 

 more than two thousand feet high over the Aar-valley; we find 

 them in multitudes at the Scheideck-pass and at Zaun perhaps a 

 thousand feet above the valley-bottom ; then again at Riiti above 

 Meiringen, which may be situated some hundred feet lower than 

 Zaun ; finally, almost in the valley-bottom itself, by Willigen, 

 and on the Kirchet, and- lower in the valley by Brienzwiler, Bri- 

 enz, Oberried, &c. But the glacier theory seems to me to be 

 pressed with the most weighty objections on the side of physics. 

 Supposing the present quantity of snow on the surface of Swit- 

 zerland to have remained unchanged, while the requisite refrige- 

 ration is derived from an alteration of the earth's axis or any 

 other source, still the question at once arises whether in fact all 

 the vallies would fill with ice and then this flow together towards 

 Switzerland in one enormous, almost horizontal glacier ? Leav- 

 ing too unsettled, the mode in which the as yet enigmatical 

 movement of the glaciers is effected, granting the hitherto gene- 



* Oasar, elongated hills. Phillips, Geol. p. 208. In Swedish as is a chain of 

 hills, and asar is the plural form and is more properly written osar. — Tr. 



t Moraine, the rubbish brought down by glaciers and left after the ico has 

 melted. — Tr. 



