290 Charles Maclaren, Esq., oa the 



in withdrawing as in applying its pressure. When the mild weather 

 comes, the surface of the ice melts and evaporates, film by film, and 

 the glacier subsiding at the rate of one or two inches per day (as 

 shewn by Mr Charles Martins, in his researches on the Faulhorn 

 glacier), withdraws its support, as it were, by grains or scruples, in 

 a manner which even the most cautious hand could scarcely imitate. 

 It is plain that a mass of floating ice loaded with stones could not 

 act with the same nicety. Drifted, as it would be, by winds, tides, or 

 currents, it would encounter fixed objects with a shock which might 

 break it in pieces, and throw the stones it bore violently to the bot- 

 tom. Cr supposing an ice-floe, with a boulder resting on or frozen 

 into it, to be stranded on a projecting rock like R, the boulder woufd 

 not be deposited till it lost its hold by the partial fusion of the ice, 

 and then its fall would be sudden and violent. I have enlarged on 

 this point, because the two agents, floating-ice and glacier-ice, which 

 have been called in hypothetically to explain the Erratic phenomena, 

 have much in common in their mode of acting, and it is difficult to 

 find characteristic facts to distinguish the agency of the one from that 

 of the other. (See Charpentier, Essai, sect. 51.) 



Opposite to Brienz, on the south side of the lake, is the Giess- 

 bach (g in the map), a famous waterfall which all travellers visit. It 

 is a succession of cascades or cataracts, by which a large volume of 

 water descends along a steep acclivity from a great height. It has 

 cut a channel in the side of the mountain from 50 to 150 feet in 

 depth, and to add to its picturesque beauty the thunders of the 

 nearer cascades, blended with the echoes of the more distant ones, 

 roll on the ear amidst a little forest of pines. I clambered up the 

 acclivity to the height of about 300 feet, and found straggling 

 blocks of granite, gneiss, or mica slate, as far as I ascended, either 

 in the bed or on the sides of the torrent. Some of them were masses 

 of six or eight cubic yards, and I noticed one about forty feet above 

 the lake, whose situation, on the verge of a little precipice, again 

 suggested the inquiry, what agency could bring it there without pre- 

 cipitating it into the water ? Erratic blocks undoubtedly exist at 

 many other points on the shores of the lake. Those mentioned fell 

 in my way when I was merely visiting the localities usually visited 

 by travellers. 



In the preceding cases I had met with crystalline boulders at no 

 greater elevation than 300 feet. My next excursion was to the 

 mountain of Abendberg (c in the map), about two miles south-west 

 from Interlaken. Dr Guggenbuhl, a benevolent German, has an 

 establishment for cretins on this hill at the height of 1800 feet 

 above the plain. In the ascent to it I found the boulders up to an 

 elevation of 700 or 800 feet, beyond which the surface is so very 

 steep that large ones could scarcely rest on it. I saw two blocks of 

 gneiss or mica slate, the one four yards long, the other fivo, which 

 IukI porli.'ips been origimilly uniled, ;m<l must then have constituted 



