J. F, CAMPBELL ON GLACIAL PERIODS, 133 
lake-basins, and made a deep hollow in the rocks behind Ivrea, which 
hollow probably held a large lake before the right lateral moraine 
was damaged by rivers. The rock-section of the Val d’Aosta is 
unlike the section of any gorge that I have seen in the Caucasus or 
in the Himalayas; but it is like the sections of many narrow 
Scotch glens and Norwegian dales. The shape of the rocks is 
different ; the stuff transported is different and differently arranged. 
The shape of the mountains is very different, taken as a range, or 
singly, or in detail. In short, at sight and after close examination, 
these lower southern Alpine slopes are glaciated, and the lower 
Caucasus and Himalayas and Celifornian slopes are not. But 
glaciers now exist on all these ranges, and the ranges have all ex- 
isted since Miocene times, according to experts. Butif so, a general 
Pliocene or Postpliocene glacial period ought to have made all 
glaciers grow on the same scale on all the ranges. The Ganges 
basin ought to be like the basin of the Dora, and the Ravee basin 
like it, or like the country near Chamounix. So far as my know- 
ledge and power of comparison extend, nothing can well be more 
different. I went up the Lago Maggiore in a steamer from Arona 
to Locarno, 62 kilometres in six hours, and back again. My object 
was to compare one large Alpine rock-groove with another in the 
Himalayas at Darjeeling. In India I lived for a fortnight on the 
edge of a spoon-shaped furrowed hollow some 80 miles long, and 
generally looked down upon a roof of cloud. I lived under a roof 
of cloud for a week in Italy, and the clouds sent down rain and 
snow in the middle of April. JI lived in a spoon-shaped hollow 
about as big as the valley of Siccim. Both are rock-basins in that 
their edges are solid rock. But the Italian spoon is deep within, 
and holds a lake whose surface is level with the plain; whereas the 
Indian spoon, though far deeper, has a continuous slope for 80 miles, 
and ends at a narrow gorge, like the Val d Aosta at Ivrea. If the 
Siccim spoon were mended by a moraine as big as the moraines at 
Ivrea, it would hold a lake proportional to the depth of the dam. 
It would hold a lake if another fold of flat Terai were to be crumpled 
up against the foot hills after the Shivalik fashion. If the Thibet 
end sunk enough, Siccim would be a lake. If the Swiss end of the 
Italian spoon, were raised enough, the Lago Maggiore would flow 
out. Any amount of damming or tilting required to fill or to empty 
these hollows has been far exceeded by the crumpling of strata 
formed at the sea-bottom between Arona and Siccim. But no pos- 
sible damming or tilting could make these two hollows alike. They 
are both valleys of erosion, at sight. The Italian geologists who 
know their country best have no doubt about their valleys; I have 
none, after seeing the land above water on a broad belt which sur- 
rounds the world. At sight the Italian rock-grooves have been 
greatly worn by glaciers and, since the local glacial period, by water. 
At sight the Indian grooves have been eroded by water alone. 
Immediately behind Locarno, which is at the fork of two long 
valleys, on steep ground, which I take to be an old moraine, are 
many deep water-furrows of the Himalayan pattern on a small 
