and since their elevation have probably always stood, above the range of ice, and hence their bold peaks. In Scotland, on the contrary, and still more in Norway, the sheet of ice which once, as is the case with Greenland now, spread over the whole country, has shorn off the summits and reduced them almost to gigantic bosses; while in Wales the same causes, together with the resistless action of time-for, as already mentioned, the Welsh hills are far older than the mountains of Switzerland - has ground down the once lofty summits and reduced them to mere stumps, such as, if the present forces are left to work out their results, the Swiss mountains will be thousands, or rather tens of thousands, of years hence. The "snow line" in Switzerland is generally given as being between 8500 and 9000 feet. Above this level the snow or névé gradually accumulates until it forms " glaciers," solid rivers of ice which descend more or less far down the valleys. No one who has not seen a glacier can possibly realise what they are like. Fig. 20 represents the glacier of the Blümlis Alp, and the Plate the Mer de Glace. They are often very beautiful. "Mount Beerenberg," says Lord Dufferin, "in size, colour, and effect far surpassed anything I had anticipated. The glaciers were quite an unexpected element of beauty. Imagine a mighty river, of as great a volume as the Thames, started down the side of a mountain, bursting over every impediment, whirled into a thousand eddies, tumbling and raging on from ledge to ledge in quivering cataracts of foam, then suddenly struck rigid by a power so instantaneous in its action that even the froth and fleeting wreaths of spray have stiffened to the immutability of sculpture. Unless you had seen it, it would be almost impossible to conceive the strangeness of the contrast between the actual tranquillity of these silent crystal rivers and the violent descending energy impressed upon their exterior. You must remember too all this is upon a scale of such prodigious magnitude, that when we suc |