326 
THE GEOLOGIST. 
Tn treating of the sculpturing of mountains, or the worl^ing out of 
their actual forms, Mr. Raskin laid the greatest stress on disintegration 
aided by chemical action, or by water £ctiug 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 Eamsay claims to have suggested, we were very 
glad to hecr 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. Euskin has done on this. 
After dwelling on the viscosity of glacier-ice, as shown by Forbes 
and admitted by Ilopkiiis, Tyndall, and others, and generally exery- 
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.- Euskin 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 Ehone 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 if, how can it remove 
greater obstacles under less advantageous conditions, which it would 
have to do in scooping a lake-basin ? Moreover, as Mr. Euskin 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 jMr. Euskin, "the glacier cleanses ; one is for 
incision, the other for ablution and removal ; and so far as the present 
