1871.] BONIS'ET FOElIATIOIf OF " CIRftUES." 321 



gently * from a central plateau to opposite points of the compass, 

 can conceive it to have been excavated by a glacier. 



In consequence of these reasons, in addition to those already 

 advanced by Sir R. Murchison, Sir C. Lyell, Mr. BaU, M, Favre, 

 (fee, I venture to maintain that it is impossible for glaciers to have 

 excavated cirques, and difficult to understand how they can have 

 excavated valleys. I now take one step further, and shall endea- 

 vour to show that, if they excavated the valleys, they must also 

 have excavated the cirques. Consider, for example, the case of the 

 Creux de Champs. This is not, as it at first sight appears, in a 

 lateral glen, but at the true head of the Grande-Eau valley. The 

 principal excavating agent, be it ice or water, must have always 

 followed the line of the present drainage of the cirque, and not of 

 that from the lower alps of the Col de Pillon. 



Efface the cirque, replace in imagination the vast mass of ma- 

 terial which has been scooped out of the heart of the Diablerets 

 between Ormond Dessus and the peaks of the mountains fill up the 

 valley of the Grande Eau, far above the village just named to near 

 the level of the Col de Pillon, there wiU. then be a rather regular 

 and shallow trench, bounded on the one side by the Tornette chain, 

 on the other by the Diablerets' massif, a far huger block than now. 

 Prom this the western and north-western drainage, whether in a 

 liquid or solid form, would have descended, chiefly along the val- 

 leys mentioned above, and partly by the small glen west of the 

 Oldenhorn, which, at the present day, has a cirque-like configura- 

 tion, while only a little would have been supplied by the low alps 

 of the Col de Pillon. Any glacier, therefore, which excavated the 

 Grande-Eau valley below Ormond Dessus must have received its 

 chief ice- affluent from the direction of the present cirque ; and I am 

 convinced that no one who has seen the locality could ever attri- 

 bute the formation of the two parts of the valley above and below 

 this village to different agencies. If, then, we have established that 

 the excavation of a cirque by a glacier is mechanically impossible, 

 the cirque, if not prior to it, must have been excavated by some 

 other agent since the ice-period. But if the streams have been able 

 to remove this enormous amount of debris above Ormond Dessus, 

 how can we account for their comparative inefficiency below ? If 

 they have been so active here, and in a few other glens, how is it 

 that they have been practically inactive in the Ehone valley and its 

 other tributaries, and in the great majority of Alpine valleys ? 

 Above aU, how are we to account for the presence of moraines in 

 the cirque itself? 



The same remarks would apply to the Fer-a-Cheval and Am Ende 

 der Welt, whose floors join, were it possible, even more uniformly 

 with those of the main valleys, in which signs of glacial action are 

 still abundantly visible. 



The conclusion then seems to me inevitable, that the cirques, and 



* The levels of points in the valley are, Miihlbach 2542 feet, Untervintl 

 (9^ miles) 2502 feet, Bruneck (14 miles) 2686 feet, Niederndorf (14 miles) 8784 

 feet, Toblach 3951 feet, Inuichen 3701 feet, Sillian (14 miles) 3611 feet. 



