40 SURFACE GEOLOGY. 



lake may be only drift, yet it seemed to me to have been modified by water. If 

 so, this gives us a beach 2185 feet above the ocean. 



Crossing Righi, I went to Lucerne; next to Bern, and from thence to Vevay, on 

 Lake Leman; thus passing lengthwise through the greater part of the great valley 

 of Switzerland between the Alps and Jura. 



North of Lake Zug is a wide plain, but little above the lake, and appearing like 

 an ancient bottom of the lake, as I doubt not it was. On the east shore of the 

 lake, I thought I saw one or two imperfect terraces. Around the western part of 

 Lucerne lake, I saw none that I recollect. 



In going from Lucerne to Bern, we ascended the Little Eramen as far as Scups- 

 heim, and then passed over to a branch of the Great Emmen, which, however, we 

 left ere many miles, and passed over an undulating country, where are numerous 

 accumulations of water-worn materials which constitute what I call beaches, or 

 perhaps, more properly, ancient sea-bo£toms. Along all the rivers on this route, 

 terraces are common and often quite perfect; for example, a little south of the 

 village of Langnan, in the Emmenthal. I ought, however, to mention that the 

 sandstone along this route sometimes assumes a terrace form, and, where covered 

 by soil, I might have mistaken such a terrace for one composed of detritus. Yet 

 I am sure that many unconsolidated postdiluvian terraces exist on these rivers. 

 On the Reuss, a little out of Lucerne, I measured one that is 267 feet above the 

 lake, and still further on another that is 325 feet above the same. Towards the 

 summit level of the route, near Scupsheim, I measured a detrital accumulation — 

 which, with some doubt, I call a beach — 894 feet above the lake, and 2274 feet 

 above the ocean. The summit I found to be 1287 feet above the lake, and 2667 

 feet above the ocean. 



Around Bern, and wherever I travelled on the banks of the Aar, the terraces 

 are well characterized. They consist mainly of gravel and sand ; but as we recede 

 from the river, and come to the beaches, the materials are coarser and pass into 

 drift, the boulders rarely exceeding two feet in diameter ; yet they are mainly of 

 the older crystalline rocks, while those in place are sandstone. 



From Bern towards Vevay, the detritus, till we reach Bulle, beyond Freyburg, 

 is evidently water worn and sorted into terraces and beaches. Some distance 

 beyond Bulle, gefiuine drift (perhaps the old moraine of the Rhone glacier) began 

 to appear, and continued, so far as I could judge in the fading twilight, nearly to 

 Vevay, where we strike some lake terraces — which Robert Chambers has described 

 as delta terraces — at the heights of 108, 165, and 442 feet above the lake. The 

 highest terrace, or beach more probably, which I passed on this route, my barometer 

 indicated to be 981 feet above Bern, and 2640 above the ocean. 



From Lausanne to Geneva, the west shore of Lake Leman is fringed with 

 terraces. In some places I noticed three or four, though not so many are continuous; 

 probably none of them are all the way. Back several miles from the lake, the 

 country appeared to me to be covered with such materials as terraces or beaches 

 are usually composed of. Some of the terraces near the lake I could see, from the 

 steamboat, to be composed of laminated sand and fine gravel. In entering the 

 harbor of Geneva, I noticed several large Alpine boulders. 



