Ice Blocks on a Moraine

Abstract

BLOCKS of ice, so far as I know and so far as I remember to have read, are not usual constituents of a moraine. So it may be well to call attention to an instance which I saw lately when walking over the Gorner Glacier with my friend Mr. J. Eccles, who is even more familiar than I am with glaciers, and to whom the sight was novel. At the base of Monte Rosa, where it begins to rise from the Goarner Glacier, are two buttresses of ice-worn rock; the northern called Ob dem See, the southern Auj der Platte. Between these a glacier, evidently of no great thickness, descends towards the west, and adjacent to each, rather on the in-side, as it may be called, is a little lake. In the northern of these (called the Gorner See, and the only one some five-and-twenty years ago, if I remember rightly) several blocks of ice are now floating; not far from it are the blocks on the moraine.