Edward Whymper

“ The glacier-eroded rocks of those valleys, and of the Alps generally, are notable for their convexity, and this affords evidence that the Alps have been subjected to less abrading power than the district in Greenland to the east of Clanshavn. Now, if there is any truth in the assumption that glaciers dig away into soft rocks with much greater rapidity than into hard ones, there is, of course, greater opportunity for the exercise of this discriminative excavation when great power is exerted and when great erosion occurs, than when less power is exercised and less matter is removed. ”

“ Professor Ramsay said, in opening his case, "There is no point in physical geography more difficult to account for than the origin of most lakes. When thought about at all, it is easy to see that lakes are the result of the formation of hollows, a great proportion of which are true rock-basins, that is to say, in hollows entirely surrounded by solid rocks, the waters not being retained by loose detritus." ”

“ It is strange that self-interest does not lead the natives of Aosta to place their crétins under such restrictions as would prevent their illicit intercourse; and it is still more surprising to find the Catholic Church actually legalising their marriage. There is something horribly grotesque in the idea of solemnising the union of a brace of idiots; and since it is well known that the disease is hereditary, and develops in successive generations, the fact that such marriages are sanctioned is scandalous and infamous. ”

“ It is true that crétins are very generally goîtrous, but it is also true that there are tens of thousands of goîtrous persons who are entirely free from all traces of crétinism. Not only so, but that there are districts in the Alps, and outside of them (even in our own country) , where goître is not rare, but where the crétin is unknown. Still, regarding the evil state of body which leads to goître as being, possibly, in alliance with crétinism, it will not be irrelevant to give the former disease a little more attention before continuing the consideration of the main subject. ”

“ He is, like Professor Ramsay, a great believer in soft places. He believes that glaciers not only erode soft rocks more rapidly than hard ones (which is a reasonable belief) , but he considers that all the chief inequalities which are now seen in valleys that have been eroded by glaciers are due to the greater or less resistancy of the rocks to the action of the ice. "Were its bed uniform in the first instance, the glacier would, in my opinion, produce the inequalities." ”

“ Upon this portion of the country civilisation is doing its best to efface the traces of the glacial period. Cultivation of the soil disturbs all deposits, and the hammers of the masons destroy the erratics. After quitting Ivrea, almost the first object of interest is the castle of Montalto, perched on a commanding crag, nearly in the centre of the valley. Thence, from Settimo Vittone up to the foot of the existing glaciers of the range of Mont Blanc, there are traces of glacier-action upon each hand. The road need not be quitted to seek for them;—they are everywhere. ”

“ A glacier which is bearing moraines always has those moraines brought together, jumbled together, towards its snout. Much of this moraine-matter falls down the sides of the glacier, and gets wedged between the ice and the bed-rock; much more falls over the terminal face of ice, and forms a stratum over which the glacier has to pass. This continually happens as the glacier progresses ”

“ Although of varying degrees of resistancy, they have, upon the whole, stood the weathering remarkably well of the thousands of years which have elapsed since the glacier covered them. The floor of the valley, generally speaking, has not been lowered since that time, by the combined agencies of sun, frost, and water, to any appreciable extent. The forms which the roches moutonnées present to-day, are the forms which they presented, perhaps, ten thousand years ago. Many of those which are freely exposed to the atmosphere retain a high polish and fine striations. ”

“ It is impossible to deny a certain limited power of erosion to glaciers; and it is difficult to see why a great glacier should not make a hollow (a shallow one) if it were to come down upon a plain, and work there for a long time. ”

“ A glacier we know, as a matter of fact, polishes down a quartz-vein in the same way as it does a bed of soft limestone. A plane which is adapted for planing wood may cut through a nail in a plank whilst taking off a shaving. But the plane is unable to take a shaving off a solid mass of iron, and it might be said, with some plausibility, that a glacier might be equally impotent if it had to work over square miles of quartz instead of square feet. ”

“ Tyndall, "a glacier is competent to remove such barriers, and they probably have been ground down in some cases thousands of feet. But being of a more resisting material than the adjacent rock, they were not ground down to the level of that rock." [63] Examination of such masses has led me to form a very different opinion. The contours of their rocks, upon the sides opposed to the direction of the flow of the glaciers, are frequently flatter, and suggestive of a greater degree of abrasion, than the adjacent and lower rocks. They have been lowered more, not less, than their surroundings. ”

“ In support of it, he has literally nothing more than the facts that glaciers abrade rocks over which they pass, and that there are numerous rock-basins (occupied or not occupied by lakes) lying within areas which were formerly covered by glacier. Here certainty ends. There are nothing but conjectures left, most of which have not even probability on their side. The idea that all petty pools and small tarns (which lie in rock-basins) occupy areas which have been subjected to special grinding, seems to me to be fully as absurd as the notion that each one lies in an area of special subsidence ”

“ Whilst this is the case, it has been continually remarked by writers upon glacier-action (who have not, however, attached any particular importance to the fact) , that quartz-veins are cut down, by the passage of ice over them, to the level of the rocks in which they are found. Quartz, one of the very hardest of commonly diffused minerals, is unable to resist the grinding of glacier. Its hardness does not prevent its being polished down to the same extent as the much less resistant rocks which enclose it. ”

“ In this country the possession of a goître is considered a misfortune rather than otherwise, and individuals who are afflicted with these appendages attempt to conceal their shame. In the Alps it is quite the reverse. In France, Italy, and Switzerland, it is a positive advantage to be goîtred, as it secures exemption from military service. A goître is a thing to be prized, exhibited, preserved—it is worth so much hard cash ”

“ Forty-five keepers, selected from the most able chasseurs of the district, guard its haunts. Their task is not a light one, although they are, naturally, acquainted with those who are most likely to attempt poaching. If they were withdrawn, it would not be long before the ibex would be an extinct wild animal, so far as the Alps are concerned. The passion for killing something, and the present value of the beast itself, would soon lead to its extermination. For as meat alone the bouquetin is valuable; the gross weight of one that is full grown amounting from 160 to 200 lbs ”

“ The contiguous surfaces to the lee-sides which are highly polished and bearing fine striations, show that sun, frost, and water, have done very little upon them since the ice departed. It would be absurd to suppose that these powers have been able to rub out all traces of ice-action (if the traces were other than very feeble) in one square yard, when in the next, upon the same rock, they have been unable even to roughen the surface, or get rid of fine scratches. ”

“ If, on the other hand, the eroded rocks continue to experience the grinding of glacier, nothing of this kind results. The tendency of the quartz to protrude is incessantly checked, because, at the slightest suspicion of protrusion, it is attacked by the ice with increased power. If by any chance it becomes elevated above the surrounding rock, it bears off the weight of the ice from the surrounding rock, and this condition of affairs continues until both quartz and gneiss are brought to the same level. ”

“ It is perfectly well known that projections in the bed of a glacier are attacked by the ice, and that depressions escape abrasion through the protection afforded by the eminences. [75] Hence it is that ultimately all angles and almost all curves are obliterated from the surfaces of rocks upon which glaciers work. Hence it is that in a district which has been severely eroded by glacier we find the rocks more flat—that is, less convex—than in one which has been less eroded. ”

“ Throughout the valley, in conjunction with the roches moutonnées, there are innumerable angular rock-surfaces which seem never to have been abraded by glacier. These lee-sides [55] are found right up to the bases of the existing glaciers. That is to say, they are found in spots which were not only covered by ice during the whole of the period in which the ancient glacier of Aosta extended to Ivrea, but have been covered by it in quite recent times. Glacier moved over them, probably, ages before the great glacier filled the valley ”

“ For my own part, I attribute the oppression which strangers say they feel, in the middle of the valley, not to stagnation of air but to absence of shadow, in consequence of the valley's course being east to west; and believe, that if the force of the wind were observed and estimated according to the methods in common use, it would be found that there is no deficiency of motion in the air throughout the entire year. ”

“ The rocks adjacent to the crags are frequently less flat, less abraded than the crags, [64] and, to all appearance, their surfaces have not been lowered more than a very few feet. The conclusions are inevitable in such cases that the adjacent rocks have suffered less than the obtrusive crags, and that any real or imaginary softness of rock has not assisted glacier-erosion to the extent assumed by Dr. Tyndall.
The enormous amount of excavation assumed by Dr. Tyndall is further accounted for by him upon the supposition that glaciers are competent to "root masses (of rock) bodily away." ”

“ If the Professor could point to a single glacier which is doubled in thickness through retardation, he would materially fortify his argument; but, in the absence of any such evidence, we may be permitted to doubt if there is much force in his idea. [70]
Secondly, the great basins which Professor Ramsay believes were excavated by glaciers, [71] are assumed to have been scooped out of areas filled by especially soft strata, which were removed with comparative facility, and at a rapid rate. Very eminent geologists disbelieve in the existence of these especially soft areas. ”

“ When lately south of the Alps, it was proved to me by Mr. Gastaldi, [81] that at the mouths of the great Alpine valleys opening on the plain of the Po, there were ancient alluvial fan-shaped masses of gravel quite analogous to those that by the agency of existing torrents have issued from the gorges on either side (for instance) of the valleys of the Rhone or the Dora, or of those that still issue at their mouths. ”

“ And so of minor slopes; if the ice flowing fast (for a glacier) rendered the rocky surface underneath unequal, such inequalities could not become great and permanent; for the rapidly-flowing ice would attack the projecting parts with greater power and effect than the minor hollows, and so preserve an approximate uniformity, or an average angle of moderate inclination. But when a monstrous glacier descended into a comparative plain, or into a low flat valley, the case was different. ”

“ For it is a remarkable circumstance, which has attracted the notice of all who have paid attention to crétinism, that the natives of the tributary valleys are almost free from the malady;—that people of the same race, speaking the same language, breathing the same air, eating the same food, and living the same life, enjoy almost entire immunity from it, while, at the distance of a very few miles, thousands of others are completely in its power. ”

“ It does not, because it is eroded equally with the much softer rock. No distinction is made by the glacier, and the presence of the quartz is not sensible to the touch from any elevation or depression.
If glacier-eroded rocks containing veins of quartz are exposed to the influences of sun, frost, and water, it is not long before the quartz begins to assert its superior resistancy. If it is in gneiss, the gneiss in contact with it speedily suffers. ”

“ Looking at all this doubt and conjecture on one side, and the numerous facts upon the other which prove that very small glacier-erosion has occurred throughout the Alps generally, and the extremely limited capacity of glaciers for excavation under any circumstances, it seems less probable that Professor Ramsay's theory will work its way to popular acceptance, than that it will quietly take its place amongst the exploded dogmas which are left behind in the progress of scientific inquiry. ”

“ For he overlooks, or, at least, does not notice, that the glacier would be melting at a rapid rate, at or near its end, and that, in all probability, the extra ablation would counterbalance whatever thickening might arise from the tendency to "heap-up." The "unusual thickness" by which he gets his "extra erosive power," is entirely conjectural, and, judging by the glaciers of the present time, it is very doubtful if it had any existence whatever. ”

“ Indeed the idea is forced on the mind, that the sluggish ice would have a tendency to heap itself up just outside the mouth of the valley, and there attain an unusual thickness, thus exercising, after its descent, an extra erosive power. ”