SnitB DB l'£tUDB, etc., by cfeANNE. 105 



"At Capvem the railway debouches on the plateau of Lannemezan, 

 where the view extends over a plain of Varied contour, which is btfunded' to 

 the south by the lofty amphitheatre of the Pyrenees, and which sinks away 

 towards the north and is lost in the horizon. We are then under the col 

 by which the loess was spread out, and a momentary glance may be had of 

 the valley of the Neste, whence the glacier degorged. ' 



" The culminatiug point is near the station of Lannemezan ; it is there, 

 near this summit, and in accordance with the torrential character of the 

 phenomena, that we see the largest sized pebbles of the kind seen in travel-^ 

 ling thither from Tarbes, some of them larger than a horse's head. And it- 

 is necessary to re-descend so far as Montr6jeau to find in a moraine, brought 

 to light by a cutting, blocks of a size comparable to that of those found in 

 this culminating ridge. 



" From Montr6jeauto Toulouse, and more especially in the plain of Muret, 

 the plain is bounded towards the left by the regular formed ridge of the 

 cone of the Neste. The hUls are cut in terraces, which become less im- 

 portant as they recede in distance from the cone. Montr6jeau and Saint- 

 Gaudens are built on the edge of a slope of water-roUed blocks^ some of tho 

 last traces of which may be recognized at the gate of Toulouse. 



" If, quitting the main line at Portet-Saint-Simon, we go up the valley of 

 the Arifege, we shall not be long in finding unequivocal evidence of tor-J 

 rential action. In the environs of Pamiers the plain is completely covered 

 with blocks of stone, perfectly rounded, which the husbandmen have 

 collected into heaps all around the cultivated spots, seeing which one could' 

 almost imagine himself on a recently grubbed cone of a recent torrent like^ 

 that of Embrun. These blocks are found of increasing size as we get 

 higher, and in the station of Foix may be seen, in the- garden of the station^ 

 master, most beautiful chips of glacier blocks, with streaks' and other- 

 indications of friction produced by glacial action. The terminal moraine 

 was in these barrages or dams, and the minute study of the environs 

 perniits, if it do not suggest, the supposition that in the glacial period the- 

 beautiful elliptical basin, at the bottom of which flows the Larget, which- 

 at Foix falls into the Arifege, was repeatedly filled and emptied, forming an 

 important lake and formidable floods." 



' In a foot-note it is stated, — " The town of Foix and its picturesque 

 chateau are situated on what looks like the gate of a sluice closing the 

 strait gorge by which the Larget debouches ; but behind this gate the basin 

 opens up and ramifies on a large scale ; and this basin, closed by a barrier 

 near the extremity of the glacier, was in circumstances exceptionally 

 favourable to the production of a lake and of d^b^cles, or breakings' Tip," 

 emptying it in a great measure of its contents." o .^ 



From the study of such and such like phenomena, M. C6zanne has been 

 led to conclude that there must have been a period when torrential actioit 

 has been much more stupendous and much more extensively difiused 

 than at present. ,,.,,. ,,,„ 



But M. C6zanne alleges that there are indications, no less marked, of 

 glacial action in deposits underlying some of these torrential deposits.hr He 

 remarks that the theory of glacial action, considered as a 'chapter of 

 geology, presents this peculiarity — that all the phenomena embraced; by itj^ 

 and all the circumstances in which they occur, may be observed in our o>vb 

 time. There is no difference, excepting in the scale of magnitude of the 

 phenomena, which has been greatly yeduoed, , h 



