Show THE GLACIERS GL OF SWITZER LAND professor A guyot gu 0 t 1 prefaced the lecture with a brief afi allusion u sion slon to the circumstance of ills his recent visit in company with other tourists to the mountains of switzerland after dwelling for a few minutes upon the floral beauties of the region ho he passed on to notice his subject t proper the glaciers of switzerland iee lee and izi tzi A glacier lie he said is a field or im r mense mass of ice filling a grand valley to the thickness of from to 1000 jeet feet and extending often as far as nine miles from fron the place of its inception efrom the great above when we lookdown look down upon these valleys of ice they the appear to be bd great reat frozen streams an and gr suc sue such sueh apgear indeed they are if we follow them upward we shall find that thoy they meet the great snow line that cv ev erl eri astin abtin g ewoud I 1 keeps its place upon the tops of olf the tho cloud bathed alps go below them upon the mountain side and you will find at your feet in many places great y reat fragments of transparent ice that evo eve havo have fallen off from the glaciers above and and woe woo to tio tie the traveler who incautiously ven ten ventures tures tureA near such spots when whole fields of ice are separated from the main body and come tumbling over tho the ahe craggy sides of the great mountains many very many have thus suddenly been cut off and forever buried from the sight of their fellows by the massive the glacier so tremendous is the pressure of air caused by their fall that very tery very often the houses of the inhabitants of the mountain slopes and villages are lifted from their places and carried carried uninjured to spots several hundred feet from where they originally stood this is the tho case where there has been no contact with the ice the simple pressure of the air being being sufficient to produce the result A immense trees that would seum seem by their circumference to be able to withstand the tornado almost are often found broken into short ddn lengths by this motion of the earth caused by y the fall I 1 ing of the ice we have thus commenced our aci with this glacier let us follow it to its source this we will iny variably find is a huge vault of ice efrom 20 to 50 feet high from which t out a living stream of yellowish water trace the rivers rivera rhine rhone aar adrift anu others of switzerland to their origin au and id you will find their birthplace in just such vaults as the one a mentioned i i from these ice iee vaults the contents of which are continually replenished by athe melting t snow that caps the moun oi tain tops we may trace the glacier down to its final resting place marking i its ever varying course no now w extending nn an a direct line for thousands of feet and then descending a steep pr precipice eci pice which breaks its surface into countless openings pen ings on cavities which reach to the very bottom of the ice the action of the sun upon this broken surface has the effect of sharpening the edges until they appear at a distance like a vast array of bright needle points I 1 but how the question is asked do these immense fields of ice reaching an altitude of feet above the level of the sea subsist year after year and up 8 on almost exactly the same spots not I 1 withstanding th the fact that vast rivers of water flow off from these glaciers at their base they never appear to have washed away As already intimated ahe the supply is taken from the snow 1 above the glacier when this supply is full fall the glacier increases in size that is to td say it progresses or extends in the direction of its lowest base when the supply u p af pf y is insufficient the size of the body 0 of ice decreases and appears to retreat but this retreat is only apparent and quite unreal during the night the traveler may sleep upon the surface of the glacier with very little grass gath gathered erect from the adjoining clefts of the mountain beneath him and not feel any moisture in the morning at about seven there is a slight melting of the ice 16 at eight or nine a few r rivulets vu may be seen coursing down the direction of the valley by the hour of noon immense rivers of water lre are ire to be observed running junul to the foot of the glaciers the surface of these ice valleys is with vertical holes which re 10 downward ich until often they find buending an au ending place at the bottom of the glacier these ho leare usually filled with ith water an and A ir them downward we shall find invariably small smail stones or pebbles which have been forced through the ice fee from above by the action of tho the sun upon them those bodies being darker than thau the leo ice absorb more of the suns rays and becoming heated melt welt an opening before them the contrary is true of large stones or boulders which are precipitated upon the glacier from above their thickness makes it impossible that they should within the short abort hours of a days sunshine become heated through and hence they tiet act as a protection for the ice beneath them from the burning rays of sol very often there will be found vast numbers of these boulders standing upon sharp pinnacles of ice several feet high b bearing tile the appearance abed of bavin havin having baving keen leen been lifted by some to their present elevation elev atlon new ZV eto times |