652 GLACIER-EROSION THEORY 



action on the northern side of the Himalayahs, in preventing the lahes 

 being filled up, that it did in the Alps by restricting the silting action. 



This was the main fact to call to the attention of the Society, with 

 reference to the great difference between the Himalayan and other 

 tropical ranges of mountains and those in Europe. The next point 

 was one of some interest and importance. There was a material well 

 known in commerce and arts, called borax, now largely employed in 

 ceramic products. It used only to be got from India as an export from 

 Tibet, and it was invariably found in connection with hot springs. 

 Within the last twenty years a remarkable change had taken place. 

 The late Count Lardarel, an original-minded and eminently philan- 

 thropic Frenchman, of Leghorn, aware of the presence of boraeic acid 

 in the jets of steam which are emitted from the surface of the broken 

 soil in the ravines of Monte Cerboli, on the margin of the Maremma of 

 the Volterra in Tuscany, hit upon the happy idea of utilizing the 

 natural heat in lieu of fuel to effect the process of evaporation. Extem- 

 pmized tanks fed by rills of cold water were employed to intercept the 

 jets of steam, until the fluid got charged with boraeic acid; while other 

 jets of steam, tapped from the soil, were led off in pipes, and distributed 

 under the evaporating pans. An unbounded supply of boraeic acid 

 was the result. As a consequence, the borax of Tibet fell in value 

 from 371. or 401. a ton to nearly half that price, until at length borax 

 was exported from England at the rate of 10/. per ton, to displace the 

 native article from the bazaars of India. In Tibet the mineral occurs 

 in the form of biborate of soda, that alkali in many places abounding in 

 the soil ; while in Italy it is yielded in the form of boraeic acid". In 

 both cases its appearance was coincident with a region of hot springs, 

 which occurred at great elevations in the Himalayahs; and for the best 

 account of their connection with borax he could refer to Dr. Thomson's 

 ' Travels in Tibet.' 



Connected with the Himalayahs, there was also a physical and vital 

 phenomenon of still greater importance. Henry Colebrook, the first 

 who, along with Colonel Crawford, measured the heights of the Dwa- 

 lagiri, procured from the plateau of Chanthan in the Himalayahs, at a 

 height of 17,000 feet above the sea-level, fossil bones, which were 

 brought down and exported as charms into India, to which the natives 

 attributed a supernatural origin, and called them ' lightning or thunder 

 bones.' At the present time, during eight months of the year, the 

 climate differed in no important respect from that of the Arctic circle, 

 and in the whole of the district there was not a single tree or shrub 

 that grew larger than a little willow about 9 inches high. The grasses 

 which grew there were limited in number, and the fodder, in the shape 

 of dicotyledonous plants, was equally scarce. Yet notwithstanding this 

 scantiness of vegetation, large fossils were found, of the rhinoceros, the 

 horse, the buffalo, the antelope, and of several carnivorous animals ; the 

 group of fossil fauna as a whole involving the condition that, at no very 

 remote period of time, a plateau in the Himalayan Mountains, now at 

 an elevation exceeding three miles above the level of the sea, where we 

 get the climate of the Arctic regions, had then such a climate as 

 enabled the rhinoceros and several sub-tropical forms to exist. It 

 would occupy too much time to explain the details of this complex 

 phenomenon. He would briefly state that the only rational solution 



