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GLACIER PHENOMENA.
233
the valley through which the glacier passes, the amount
of precipitous wall, the friability of the rock, &c. &c.,
will the number of such stones be greater or less.
These, as they are marshalled 011 each side or shore of
the glacier, form the " lateral moraines." It often
happens that two confluent valleys are filled with glaciers,
and these meet like the meeting of waters, and swell
into a larger stream; the lateral moraines of the inner
sides each unite, and thus a medial moraine is formed.
Finally, these moraines, travelling always onwards,
reach, stone by stone, to the bottom of the glacier,
and there they are deposited; forming the terminal
moraine, which sometimes amounts to a huge
accumulation.
I am sorely tempted to continue this subject: to
explain how great masses of rock float upon this icy sea,
and are upreared on crystal pedestals; how an errant
butterfly, chilled to death by the cold glacier blast, falls
upon the ice, and by the necessary laws of heat scoops
for itself a little grave, a water cup of oval shape, its
longer axis lying due north and south, and deepest at the
north, so accurately that the traveller without a compass
might safely find his bearings by placing a stick in such
a cup, and it would fall in a sloping line indicating the
meridian of the place; how this little cup deepens and
grows to a large basin, and how that basin shallows
afterwards, is next obliterated, and a symmetrical cone
with an oval base rises exactly in its place—a temporary
monument of ice, marking the grave of the dead
butterfly. But an explanation of these curious phenomena
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