Notices of Memoirs — Glaciers in N. California. 269 



I. — On the Discovert of Actual Glaciers on the Mountains 

 OF the Pacific Slope. By Clarence King, U.S. Geologist. 



{American Journal of Science and Arts. Third series, vol. i., no. 3, March, 1871.) 



THE researches of tlie last ten years in the extreme height of the 

 mountains of the far west of the United States has shown the 

 remarkable feature, on the one hand, of the absence of glaciers in 

 situations which in altitude and configuration resemble the glacier 

 regions of Switzerland and Norway, and on the other, especially in 

 the higher Cordillera, of the ancient presence of glaciers in the form 

 of modified surface configurations, vast moraines flanking the upper 

 gorges, roches moutonnees, and polished rocks, at various levels above 

 9,000 feet. The researches of Prof. Whitney and his assistants in 

 the Sierra Nevada have developed a glacier system as extensive and 

 as vast as that once occupying the valleys of the Alps, but, unlike it 

 at the present day, no traces of glaciers are to be met with in the 

 Sierras, save one or two rudimentary masses of ice, and the fields of 

 perpetual nev^. This snow, though deep and extensive, is not 

 sufficient to initiate glaciers, the whole region being traversed by a 

 west wind, the moisture of which is wrung from it by warm as- 

 cending currents from the valleys below, and there is not sufficient 

 left to cause any great precipitation on the mountain peaks ; thus the 

 heights of Colorado are less snowy than those of the Sierras, and 

 the Wind Kiver, Wahsatch and Uintah ranges, were found by Mr. 

 King to be even less than the Laramie range in Colorado. 



In September, 1870, Mr. King, " with a small detachment of the 

 U.S. Geological Exploration of the 40th parallel," visited Mount 

 Shasta, Northern California, to make a detailed survey of the lava 

 systems which flow east from the peak, and are connected with the 

 basalt of the Desert of Nevada. 



Between the main mass of Shasta and the secondary conical cone 

 (the lesser Shasta), occurs a deep gorge, through which flows a 

 glacier curving round the base of the latter, its width there being 

 about 4,000 feet, and not less than three miles of it being in view, 

 starting almost at the crest of the main mountain, the top of which 

 was found to be 14,440 feet above the sea-level. From this crest 

 three glaciers were seen, one being four miles and a half in lengih, 

 and from two to three in width. On the south side no glaciers or 

 even snow occurred, which accounts for Prof. Whitney's party failing 

 to find glaciers on this mountain, an east and west line dividing the 

 tract witli glaciers from the tract without. 



Small masses of ice were found on the shaded side of many of the 

 deep ravines or canons which intersect the lava flows, some of these 

 masses being from one to two thousand feet in length ; one larger one 

 occurred in a deep canon on the eastern side of the volcano, being 

 divided into two branches by an uprising dome of lava, the one ex- 

 tending for a mile and a half down the canon, the surface being 



