1G 
GLACIAL PERIOD. 
intellectual effort of the imagination without 
which the most brilliant results of modern 
science remain an unmeaning record to us. 
Let us, nevertheless, try to follow. 
The glacier of the Rhone, occupying the 
whole space between the Bernese and Yalesian 
Alps, filled to overflowing the valley of the 
Rhone; at Martigny it was met by a large 
tributary from Mont Blanc, by the side of 
which it advanced into the plain beyond, fill¬ 
ing the whole Lake of Geneva, and covering 
the beautiful Canton de Vaud and parts of 
Fribourg, Neuchatel, Berne, and Soleure, rising 
to the crest of the Jura, and in many points 
penetrating even beyond its outer range. 
To the east of this, the largest of all the 
ancient glaciers of Switzerland, we find the 
ancient glacier of the Aar, descending from 
the northern slope of the whole range of the 
Bernese Oberland. The glaciers that once 
filled the valley of Hasli, from the Grimsel to 
Meyringen, and those that came down from the 
Wetterhorner, the Schreckhorner, the Finster- 
Aarhorn, and the Jungfrau through the valleys 
of Grindelwald and Lauterbrunnen, united in 
a common bed, the bottom of which was the 
