Grade Profile in Alpine Glacial Erosion. 273 



They occurred as elements of the widely meandering 

 divide, or of its principal spurs, and never as minor 

 elevations in the basins thus inclosed. In their outlines, 

 in plan, there was presented a pattern of innumerable 

 cirques, as a rule intersecting, and of approximately 

 equal radii though unequal lengths of arc. Often enough 

 to suggest a tendency, this length of arc approached, or 

 even a little exceeded, the half-circle. In such excep- 

 tional cases flat-topped arms of the upland on either 

 side made gently graded descent, ending in rounded 

 shoulders still overlooking the basins. These sharp 

 outlines were suggestive of nothing so much as the 

 scattered remnants of a sheet of dough on the biscuit- 

 board, after the biscuit-tin has done its work. The cirque 

 walls, obviously, were walls of sapping and recession. 

 And in a measure, therefore, the greater arcs, thus scal- 

 loped in detail, inclosing the basins, were arcs of 

 recession also. 



The tables rarely occurred wide apart, but in clusters 

 or short chains. The cirques also were noticeably clus- 

 tered, alternately, on opposite sides of the divide, and 

 the tabular survivals of the old surface were commonly 

 confined to these sections of the divide, between its more 

 pronounced meanders. Where the old surfaces were 

 grouped, a broadly domed divide as a rule was traceable 

 across them ; but detached, they presented as many 

 differently inclined single planes. 



In the early development of bad-land forms out of 

 a soft plain there is scalloping in plan, though in less 

 clean arcs than the cirques exhibit. But one charac- 

 teristic feature of the cirque, regarded as a hollow, had 

 110 analogue in these accepted type-forms of running- 



