"The ancient moraines, situated as they are at a great distance from those of the present day, are nowhere so distinct or so frequent as in Valais, where MM. Venetz and J. de Charpentier noticed them for the first time; but as their observations are as yet unpublished, and they themselves gave me the information, it would be an appropriation of their discovery if I were to describe them here in detail. I will limit myself to say that there can be found traces, more or less distinct, of ancient terminal moraines in the form of vaulted dikes at the foot of every glacier, at a distance of a few minutes' walk, a quarter of an hour, a half-hour, an hour, and even of several leagues from their present extremities. These traces become less distinct in proportion to their distance from the glacier, and, since they are also often traversed by torrents, they are not as continuous as the moraines which are nearer to the glaciers. The farther these ancient moraines are removed from the termination of a glacier, the higher up they reach upon the sides of the valley, which proves to us that the thickness of the glacier must have been greater when its size was larger. At the same time, their number indicates so many stopping-places in the retreat of the glacier, or so many extreme limits of its extension--limits which were never reached again after it had retired. I insist upon this point, because if it is true that all these moraines demonstrate a larger extent of the glacier, they also prove that their retreat into their present boundaries, far from having been catastrophic, was marked on the contrary by periods of repose more or less frequent, which caused the formation of a series of concentric moraines which even now indicate their retrogression.