< Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 44.djvu
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THE ICE AGE AND ITS WORK.

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two thousand feet, while on the Jura itself it seems to have been again raised to three thousand feet at its highest point;[1] and he quotes Charpentier's general conclusion:

It goes without saying that not only all the valleys of the Valais were filled with ice up to a certain height, but that all lower Switzerland in which we find the erratic débris of the Rhone Valley must have been covered by the same glacier. Consequently all the country between the Alps and the Jura, and between the environs of Geneva and those of Soleure, has been the bed of a glacier.

And then, after quoting the observations of Agassiz on the same phenomena and of those of North America, he gives his own conclusions in the following words:

It is plain to those who would look without prejudice that the rounded and mammillated surfaces, the scratched, polished, and grooved rocks, and a great number of the phenomena which accompanied the distribution of the bowlders and the drift, are consistent only with the fact that in the last geological age there was an immense development of glaciers which occupied not only the high ranges of the Alps and the Dovrefelds, but the secondary ranges and lower heights of the continents of Europe and North America. This conclusion seems supported by every form of converging evidence, and is apparently beyond the reach of cavil. So far there is no question at issue.[2]

We may take it, therefore, that the views of Charpentier, Agassiz, and Sir Charles Lyell as to the extent and thickness of the great Rhone glacier are admitted to be correct, or, at least, not to be exaggerated, by the most strenuous opponents of the extreme glacialists. We may, therefore, use this as a fixed datum in our further investigations, and I think it will be found to lead us irresistibly to conclusions which in other cases these writers declare to be inadmissible.—Fortnightly Review.

The cities and towns visited by the Rev. J. A. Wylie during an excursion to central Manchuria in September and October, 1892, were centers of trade for the surrounding country, many of them having very large distilleries, inn-yards of great extent capable of accommodating hundreds of guests, and oil-works of various kinds; while outside their walls were generally some brick-kilns, brickworks, and lime-kilns. The houses were chiefly built of brick; burned brick was used for the better houses in the town, while unburned brick or mud only was used in the country. In some of the towns the shop-fronts were quite imposing, substantially built, and lavishly decorated. The streets were wide and level. Mr. Wylie visited the region in the dull season, and saw, either in town or country, none of the stir which all these arrangements betoken for the busy season.
  1. ↑ These figures are almost certainly incorrect, as the upper surface of the glacier must have had a considerable downward slope to produce motion. The recent work of M. Falsan, La Période Glaciaire, gives the thickness as about 3,800 feet at the head of the lake and 3,250 feet at Geneva.
  2. ↑ The Glacial Nightmare and the Flood, p. 208.
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