144 TRACES OF ANCIENT GLACIERS. 



I am aware that the details which I have given in this paper will impress the 

 reader with the limited extent of my researches compared with the field that lies 

 yet unexplored. I have endeavored, however, to visit those points most likely to 

 afford satisfactory results. If I have done enough in so difficult a matter to stimu- 

 late younger and more vigorous explorers to push these investigations into all the 

 Alpine districts of our country, my deficiencies will ere long be supplied, and what 

 I now grope after in the twilight may be made to stand out in the clearness of 

 day, and with the stability of established truth. 



« 



Note. — In looking over the preceding pages, as they have passed through the 

 press, it has occurred to me that the few references which I have made to the 

 many eminent men on both sides of the Atlantic, who have written upon Surface 

 Geology, might possibly be imputed to an overweening opinion of the superior value 

 of my own observations. I can hardly believe, however, after what I have said on 

 page 34, that any will think me guilty of such folly; certainly not in respect to my 

 few and unimportant observations upon Europe. The fact is, I had been much 

 interested in New England with surface geology under the form of terraces and 

 beaches, or in more general terms, as unmodified and modified drift, and I was 

 anxious to see with my own eyes how nearly these phases of the phenomena in 

 Europe agreed with those at home. But the thought never entered my mind, that 

 I should seem to be exalting my own few and defective observations above those 

 of the scores of eminent men, who have been studying similar phenomena. I 

 referred to the labors of Mr. Chambers and Professor Ramsay, because I had fol- 

 lowed so closely in their track. If others have looked at the subject from the 

 same point of view, I am not aware of it. I hesitated much whether it were best 

 to give these European facts, as well as those in our country out of New England, 

 because they are so few and scattered, but not because I imagined I was ignoring 

 or neglecting the labors of others. And they do seem to me sufficient to show an 

 identity between certain phenomena of surface geology in widely separated regions. 



PUBLISHED BY THE SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 



WASHINGTON, D. C. 



apkil, 18 5 7. 



