^ricttiifk 



FOR GENERAL READERS. 



Vol. II. 



FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 7, 1888. 



No. 10. 



Scientific Table Talk 



Ancient Opinions and Prescientific 

 Fancies concerning the Interior of 

 the Earth (illus.) 



Geology of Bath.— II. (illus.) 



General Notes 



Natural History : 



The Gorgona Antelope {illus.) 

 Miscellaneous Notes 



Correspondence : 



Expansion of India- Rubber —A 



PAGE 

 217 



219 

 223 



225 



226 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

 Cobra's Revenge — Strange Action 

 of a Beetle 226 



Meeting of the British Association at 

 Bath: 



Address by the President 227 



Abstract of the Address to the 

 Mathematical and Physical Sec- 

 tion 233 



Abstract of the Address to the 

 Chemical Section 235 



Abstract of the Address to the Geo- 

 logical Section 



Abstract of the Address to the 

 Biological Section 



Abstract of the Address to the Geo- 

 graphical Section 



Abstract of the Address to the 

 Mechanical Science Section 



Notices 



Meteorological Returns 



237 



239 



244 



245 

 247 

 247 



NOTICE. 



We have pleasure in announcing that a Special Supple- 

 ment of the Scientific News in connection with 

 the British Association Meeting at Bath, will be 

 published on the morning of Monday, 10th Septem- 

 ber, 1888. Arrangements have been made to give 

 a resume of each day's proceedings, as well as 

 abstracts of papers interesting to general readers. 

 Copies of Scientific News, as well as of the 

 Special Supplement, can be obtained at the principal 

 bookstalls and newsagents in Bath, or will be sent 

 by post on sending $±d. in stamps to the Publisher, 

 138, Fleet Street, London, E.C. 



SCIENTIFIC TABLE TALK. 



By W. Mattieu Williams, F.R.A.S., F.C.S. 

 In my last I referred to a visit to Agassiz, on the Aar 

 Glacier, in 1842, which was remarkably instructive. 



The nearest ordinary habitation to the glacier is the 

 Hospice of the Grimsel, where I had already spent one 

 day and met some of the Neufchatel glacier-students. 

 We started for the day's excursion very jovially, all 

 singing the ",Rans des Vaches," and walked up a glaciated 

 valley for about three-quarters of an hour, then climbed 

 up a heap of rock fragments. This was a part of the 

 terminal moraine of the glacier, the material carried by 

 the ice in the manner presently to be described, and 

 pitched down at the end, or foot, of the glacier. 



We next mounted a tall, long ridge which appeared to 

 be built up of similar material only. This, however, was 

 not the case, for on removing the superficial fragments, 

 ice was seen below. We were already on the glacier, 

 but the ice was completely hidden. This ridge was the 

 medial moraine, or gufferlinie, one of unusually large 

 dimensions, especially as regards its height and width, 

 and the magnitude of some of the blocks of stone that 

 cover it. 



But what is a gufferlinie or medial moraine ? 



As the accumulated overflow of ice which constitutes 

 a glacier travels down its valley-trough path it receives 

 on each side, or shore, more or less of fragments which 

 fell from the rocks immediately above. 



Every such block of stone that has any considerable 

 thickness shelters the ice on which it falls from the direct 

 rays of the sun, and thus while the ice all round is 

 lowered in level by the summer thawing the protected 

 portion remains relatively higher. By such action each 

 shore or lateral termination of the glacier becomes an 

 elevated ridge of ice, clothed with a protective covering 

 of rock fragments. These are the lateral moraines. 



But it commonly happens in the upper glacial regions 

 of the high Alps that two of these glacier valleys meet at 

 their lower part, and spread out to fill a single still lower 

 valley. The two glaciers thus become confluent, like 

 rivers or their tributaries that similarly meet. It is 

 evident that in such case the moraines of the inner 

 shores of each glacier — i.e., of those shores which meet 

 at the confluence — must unite. They do so, and now 

 instead of being on the shores of each of their former 

 respective glaciers, they meet in the middle of the wider 

 stream of ice, and thus form the medial moraine, or 

 gufferlinie. 



There are two upper branches of the Aar Glacier, the 

 Finsteraar and the Lauteraar Glaciers— the dark and the 

 clear glaciers. By their union they form the main lower 

 glacier, and this medial moraine along which we walked 

 In some places rises fully 80 feet above the general 

 level of the naked ice, a ridge of clear ice hidden by its 

 covering, as above described. Of its length some idea 

 may be formed from the fact that although we walked 

 at a good pace, we were more than three hours travelling 

 continuously along it before we reached the great block 

 on which was the edifice of loose stones designated, as we 

 learned by the inscription on a big flag, the " Hotel des 

 Neufchatelois." This was situated a short distance 

 below the projecting spur or promontory of rock Im 

 Abschwimg, at the foot of which the confluence occurs. 



We were hospitably received, supplied with coffee, 

 bread-and-cheese, and wine, and then invited to inscribe 

 our names in the visitors' book. The leaves of this book 

 were the facets of the great boulder on which the " hotel " 

 was erected, and the pen and ink were a paint-brush 

 and a pot of red ochre paint. The signatures were 

 inscribed in characters varying from three or four inches 

 to a foot in length. 



