AMONU GLACIERS RECENT AND EXTINCT. 
173 
■glaciers of the Rhone and Viesch, and the great Aletsch g’lacier, 
and later on we went to the Monte Rosa district and its glaciers. 
At the foot of the Rhone glacier we saw proofs of the recent 
gradual diminution of the ice in that district, when we examined 
the terminal moraines which are arranged concentrically one 
within another, showing the retiring, step by step, of the ice 
foot. We soon found that the glaciers of the Alps are not every- 
where shrinking at the present time. The Gorner and Findelen 
glaciers, which descend from the Monte Rosa snow-fields, are 
increasing , for we found the great G-orner glacier towards the 
base ploughing up the green turf and cherry-trees thereon. 
Men too are still living who can remember encroachments on 
considerable tracts of land, and even that the Gorner glacier 
thrust boulders through the walls of chalets, some fifty or sixty 
of which were destroyed by the protrusion of the ice. The Zmutt 
glacier, too, which takes its name from the vast masses of rock 
which cover its lower extremity, should be visited to see what 
an amount of moraine matter is travelling slowly onwards 
towards the rushing river which flows in a torrent from its icy 
interior. Above it rises on one side the magnificent Matterhorn, 
which sends down masses of greenstone to the glacier, to travel 
onwards with the gneiss of the Dent Blanche and Col d’Erin. 
Our guide over this glacier was one of those who the year before 
went to assist in bringing in the mangled remains of Mr. Hudson, 
Mr. Hadow, and Michael Croz, after that fearful fall from a 
precipice of 4,000 feet, on the side of the Matterhorn above the 
glacier. The body of Lord Francis Douglas they never found, and 
it was supposed to have fallen into a crevasse. I need hardly 
allude to the grand scenery around Zermatt and the Riffel, with 
Monte Rosa and her glaciers, the Lyskamn, the Breithorn, the 
Matterhorn, the Dent Blanche, and the Weishorn as seen from 
the Gorner Grat and the Cima di Jazi, which itself is a scene 
of enchantment as you look upon these magnificent mountains 
on whose summits snow and frost reign supreme, and which are 
seldom trodden save by the chamois, or floated over save by the 
lammergeyer. Here, too, you stand face to face with the 
tremendous eastern precipice of Monte Rosa, while 6,000 feet 
I below lies the Macugnaga glacier, and away, far below that, 
the green vineyards of sunny Italy. Yet even here, though 
surrounded with snow mountains, from which flow great 
rivers of ice, around the Riffel, on the flanks of Monte Rosa, or 
j at the Gorner Grat, every place that is free from snow reveals 
evidence of the once greater extension of far larger glaciers in 
j roches moutonees, blocs perches, and ice action of other days. 
But before alluding to the phenomena of extinct glacial action 
more fully, allow me to say that I know of no glaciers where 
\ the results of ice action, or glaciation, can be studied in greater 
