434 NOTES ON THE MUELLER GLACIER, NEW ZEALAND, 



and forming the middle part of the glacier. On emerging from 

 this opening the glacier turns to the west, almost at a right angle 

 to its former direction, and receives a considerable addition from 

 a glacier descending in an eastei'ly direction from the south 

 eastern slopes of Mount Sefton. It now expands until it reaches 

 a breadth of a mile and a half, and then decreases again to 

 about a mile at its terminal face. The length of the upper 

 glacier and snowtield is about five miles, the middle portion one 

 and a half miles, and the lower portion two and a half miles, thus 

 giving a total length of nine miles. 



Several small feeders come in on the north side of the lower 

 portion from Mount Sefton, but these are generally glaciers of 

 the second order and pay their contributions in the form of ice 

 avalanches, which in the summer melt before they can be incor- 

 porated with the main glacier. 



In his report of 1862, Sir J. von Haast gives the height of the 

 terminal face above the sea as 285 1 feet, but in his " Geology of 

 Canterbury and Westland " he puts it at 2578 feet. No mention 

 is made of the discrepancy, and I cannot say which of the two is 

 nearer the tioith. 



The whole of the lower portion of the glacier and most of the 

 middle portion, is covered with angular detritus deposited on the 

 glacier as shingle slips from the surrounding precipitous moun- 

 tains; lateral and medial moraines being confluent into a continu- 

 ous mass covering the whole surface of the glacier, and which I 

 will distinguish as the " surface moraine." The only glacier in the 

 Swiss Alps which approaches the Mueller in the quantity of 

 debris on the surface is the Glacier de Miage, on the south side of 

 Mont Blanc, of which Prof. J. D. Forbes says "nearly the whole 

 surface is covered with moraine."* 



This morainic matter is not smooth on the surface but broken- 

 up into ridges and hillocks by the melting of the ice below. As 



'Travels through the Alps of Savoy, 'Ind ed., p. 197. 



