294 Charles Maclaren, Esq., on the 



who have not seen them in shower as well as sunshine, lose one-half 

 of their grandeur and beauty. 



Figure 7 above, conveys an idea of the usual form of the lower 

 valley of Ilasli (Nieder Hasli) in cross section. The bottom, about 

 three-fourths of a mile in breadth, is level, or a little raised in the 

 middle, and entirely composed of water-worn gravel or sand, g r. 

 At one or both sides there is generally a vertical precipice of lime- 

 stone, one, two, or three hundred feet high, with a talus of debris at 

 its foot, the wrecks probably of a lateral moraine. On the top of the 

 vertical precipice at 1, is generally a sloping shelf covered with 

 bright green herbage or shrubs. Behind this is a second precipice, 

 also vertical or nearly so, and crowned with a second grass plot, 2. 

 Above this is a third, and even fourth precipice, but the upper rocky 

 surfaces slope backward more rapidly. By such steps the wall of the 

 valley rises to a height of 2000 or even 3000 feet, with patches of 

 grass occurring at intervals, up to the line of perpetual snow. We 

 saw no heather in the Alps. 



At the sites a, b, Br, and g in the map, the travelled blocks were 

 met with only 200 or 300 feet above the bottom of the valley, but 

 if I had been able to search the ground high above, there is little 

 doubt that I would have found them at as great an elevation as at 

 h or k — that is, 1700 or 1800 feet. Nor is this the extreme height 

 they have attained. 



A little above Meyringen the valley of the Aar is barred by a ridge 

 of limestone of considerable height, through which the river has cut 

 a very narrow channel. The top of this ridge is much smoothed, 

 and at one place very distinctly striated. A considerable number of 

 granite and gneiss boulders were resting on the top, the large ones 

 generally angular, the small ones rounded, but on the south face of 

 the ridge which looks up the valley they were lying in hundreds. 

 Granite has a great economic value in Switzerland, and many of 

 these blocks, I was told, were carried^to Berne some years ago, a 

 distance of fifty miles, to serve as building materials for the new 

 bridge. But, independently of the boulders, the ridge itself is a 

 curious object. It is nearly a mile in length, measured along the 

 valley, and 500 feet in height; and being apparently of the same 

 rock with that which bounds the valley above and below, the question 

 suggests itself how the agent, whatever it was, which scooped out the 

 rest of the channel to so great a depth, and gave it a slope of such 

 unbroken uniformity (of probably 1 foot in 200 or 300), should have 

 suspended its work here, and left this mound of rock in its place ? It 

 seems probable that the two lateral valleys y and z, which join the 

 main valley here, had some connection with the existence of the mound 

 in question. If each of these had its glacier, the two lateral glaciers 

 must have modified the action of the principal one. They might ob- 

 struct its downward march, by pushing forward masses of debris, 

 or they might raise a solid barrier of ice like that which shut the 



