326 



THE GEOLOGIST. 



In treating of the sculpturing of mountains, or the working out of 

 their actual forms, Mr. Ruskin laid the greatest stress on disintegration 

 aided by chemical action, or by water acting as rain-torrent ; and, 

 although not ignoring the action of ice, dwelt properly and rightly 

 on the view that ice was a less powerful agent than water in its other 

 forms in a sculpturing capacity. In respect to the origin by glacier- 

 excavation of the basins of the Swiss and other mountain-lakes, 

 which Professor Ramsay claims to have suggested, we were very 

 glad to hear Mr. Ruskin speaking out forcibly and to such good pur- 

 pose. And it would be well indeed if, on some other so-called ac- 

 cepted topics, we had other keen thinkers speaking out as boldly and 

 as eloquently as Mr. Ruskin has done on this. 



After dwelling on the viscosity of glacier-ice, as shown by Forbes 

 and admitted by Hopkins, Tyndall, and others, and generally every- 

 where now, and on those experiments which have shown the central 

 portions of the glacier to be in quicker motion than the sides, which 

 cling to the mountain or gorge on either hand, Mr. Buskin charged 

 the glacier motion as being wholly powerless wherever the glacier 

 falls into a pit. " There have been," said he, " suggestions made 

 that the glaciers of the Alps may have scooped out the lake of 

 Geneva. Tou might as well think they had scooped out the sea. 

 Once let a glacier meet with a hollow and it sinks into it, and becomes 

 practically stagnant there, and can no more deepen or modify its re- 

 ceptacle than a custard can a pie-dish." And then he went on to 

 show, as an example, how the great glacier of the Rhone could not 

 cut a passage through the gorge of St. Maurice. That is indeed the 

 true way to test : take a small obstruction, and see how a big 

 glacier can deal with it. If it fail to remove it; how can it remove 

 greater obstacles under less advantageous conditions, which it would 

 have to do in scooping a lake-basin ? Moreover, as Mr. Ruskin well 

 put the facts forward, the glacier carries the fallen stones consti- 

 tuting its moraine on its surface, but does not produce the mo- 

 raine by its own action. The glacier likes, so to speak, nothing 

 under it ; it glides forward on a launching smooth sheet ; the moraine 

 consists of the sheddings of the rocks above, not of the broken frag- 

 ments of the ground beneath. The glacier, too, moves slowly ; the 

 torrent quickly, pushing stones, sand, and grit in its furious course, 

 and grinding like a rough file moved at the rate of ten miles an hour. 

 " The torrent cuts," says Mr. Buskin, "the glacier cleanses ; one is for 

 incision, the other for ablution and removal; and so far as the present 



