Identifier: quarterlyjourna181862geol (find matches)
Title: The Quarterly journal of the Geological Society of London
Year: 1845 (1840s)
Authors: Geological Society of London
Subjects: Geology
Publisher: London (etc.)
Contributing Library: Smithsonian Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: Biodiversity Heritage Library

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eld by several distinguished geologists, both English and con-tinental. Since then I have twice revisited Switzerland, and have seen goodreason to change my opinion respecting the cause of the trans-port of erratic blocks to Monthey and the Jura, and of debrisnot remodelled by rivers, &c, that lies scattered over the lowlandsof Switzerland, or that borders, or lies in great mounds well out in,the plain of Piedmont and Lombardy. I am now convinced, forexample, that the vast circling moraine of Ivrea, noticed by Studer in1844, was shed from a glacier, 105 miles in length, that filled thevalley of Aosta to a height of more than 2000 feet, and protruded farinto the plain ; while on the north a still greater glacier, long agodescribed by Charpentier, flowed from the valley of the Bhone rightacross the low country until its end abutted on the Jura. As thereare still many persons in England who doubt these conclusions, it 1 The Old Glaciers of North Wales/ Longman & Co. VoLXVm.n-VllL
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186 PEOCEEDItfGS OP THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. (Mar. 5, may not be beside the question to state the considerations that ledme to reject the old theory. Reasons for abandoning the older theories.—I first began to doubtthe correctness of my earlier opinions in the summer of I860, whileexamining the country near Bonn, the banks of the Moselle, and theEifel. Keither in the valleys nor on the wide table-lands on bothsides of the Ehine and the Moselle is there any sign of glacial drift.Excepting alluvial debris in the valleys, the native rock is generallyquite bare of transported detritus ; and the only marks of glaciation lielow on the sides of the Moselle, where the floating down of the river-ice has frequently rounded, polished, and striated the rocky banks inthe direction of the flow. Boulders, transported from further up thestream, also sometimes lie on the shores. But, in the absence of truedrift, I considered that, had Switzerland been depressed at least 3000feet, until its mountains

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