Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 44.djvu/802

784 bowlders, forming the terminal moraine of the ice-sheet. This is exactly similar in general form and structure to the moraines left by the old Alpine or North British glaciers, and if the former could have been produced by a flood so could the latter. But the American terminal moraine runs across the country almost irrespective of its contour, and is often as well marked on plateaus as in valleys and on the intermediate slopes. Moreover, this moraine often lies on the southern slope of the hills draining toward the Mississippi Valley; and we are asked to believe that a flood vast enough to carry gravel and rocks for hundreds of miles to such a position, left them all stranded on a slope down which it must have been rushing with increased velocity and without hindrance toward the Gulf of Mexico! So far as I know, Sir Henry Howorth is absolutely alone among living writers in his diluvial theories, and I only give this brief statement of their overwhelming impossibilities because his book is so interesting, and his assertions that his theory explains all the facts are so confident and so often repeated that they are likely to confuse the judgment of readers who have not paid special attention to the subject.

Returning to the main question, of the possibility of glaciers or ice-sheets moving over long distances of generally level ground with intervening hills and valleys, there is an important piece of evidence, the bearing of which appears to have been overlooked by objectors. The former existence of the great Rhone glacier carrying erratics to the slopes of the Jura from beyond Geneva on the southwest to Soleure on the northeast, is universally admitted. This glacier passed out of the gorge between the Dent du Midi and the Dent de Morcles, and a little below St. Maurice enters on the alluvial plain which extends to the lake. From this point to Geneva, a distance of about sixty miles, may be considered a level plain, the descent into the lake being balanced by the ascent out of it. Yet it is admitted that the glacier did move over this distance, since erratics which can be traced to their source on the left of the valley below Martigny are found near that city. But the main part of the glacier curved round to the right across the Lake of Neufchâtel, and extended at least as far as Soleure, a distance of about ninety miles. To do this it must have ascended five or six hundred feet to the country around Fribourg, and before reaching Soleure must have passed over a hill three or four hundred feet higher. Yet on the flanks of the Jura above Soleure there are erratics which have been carried on the surface of the glacier from the east side of the valley below Martigny, and close to Soleure itself there are remains of a terminal subglacial moraine of compact bowlder clay. Sir Charles Lyell describes this as—