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Proceedings of the Royal Society 
We even took out two or three fragments which were sticking in 
the ice of the glacier. These shells are not peculiar to one spot, 
but occurred more or less abundantly across the valley. 
From the nature of the material of which these mounds consist, 
and from the occurrence of marine shells, it becanjie evident that we 
were looking not merely upon ordinary moraine heaps— the de- 
tritus carried down on the surface of the ice and discharged upon 
the bottom of the valley. The glacier was engaged in ploughing 
up the sediment which had been formerly deposited in the valley by 
the sea, and on the heaps of earth and clay so formed were thrown 
the gravel and blocks brought down by the glacier. In short, we 
saw here actually at work a process of excavation, by which it had 
been conjectured that the marine drift was removed from certain 
valleys in the British Isles.^ 
We made two attempts, both unsuccessful, to climb to the vast 
table-land of snow from which these glaciers are fed. But we suc- 
ceeded in reaching a point from which a good view of the seemingly 
boundless undulating plain of smooth snow could be obtained. We 
ascended the ridge that separates the two glacier valleys just de- 
scribed. After leaving the raised beach of Fondalen, with its mas- 
sive erratics, we climbed a steep slope, clothed with a thick brush- 
wood of birch, mountain-ash, and dwarf-willow, and luxuriant 
masses of ferns, bilberries, cloudberries, juniper, rock-geranium, 
lychnis, &c. The beech trees are often a foot or a foot and a-half 
in diameter at the base, and are the building material used at the 
hamlet of Fondalen below. These trees, at the height of 1320 feet 
above the sea, still often measure a foot across at the bottom, and 15 
or 20 feet in height. At this height, and even considerably lower, 
there were large sheets of snow on the 12th of J uly, and these in- 
creased in number and depth as we ascended. The birch trees grow 
smaller and more stunted the farther they struggle up the bare 
mountain ridge, until they become mere bushes. The willows, in 
like manner, dwindle down till they look like straggling tufts of 
heather, though still bearing their full-formed catkins. At a 
height of 1690 feet, these stunted bushes at last give place to a 
scrub of bilberry, mosses, and lycopodia. The mountain consists 
■^See Prof. A. C. Ramsay, “Glaciers of Switzerland and Wales,” 2d edition 
p. GO. 
