their appearance, while the rock-surfaces, when these are visible and
capable of bearing and retaining glacial markings, present the usual
aspect of _roches moutonnées_. The same kinds of morainic materials
and ice-markings may of course be followed up into the valleys not
only of the Alps properly so-called, but also into those of the hills
of Bugey and the secondary mountain-chain of Savoy and Dauphiny. It
has indeed long been known that local glaciers formerly occupied the
mountain-valleys of Bugey. For example, a number of small glaciers have
descended from the slopes of the mountains west of Belley (such as Bois
de la Morgue, Bois de Lind, etc.) to the Rhone, and again from Mont du
Chat to the north-west. These glaciers were quite independent of the
greater ice-streams of the neighbouring Alps of Savoy, and the same was
the case with the glaciers of that mountainous tract which extends from
Nantua south to Culoz, between the valleys of the Ain and the Rhone.
From this elevated region many local glaciers descended, such as that
of the Valromey, which flowed for a distance of some twenty miles from
north to south. Again, similar local glaciers have left abundant traces
of their former presence throughout the mountainous belt of land that
stretches between Chambery and Grenoble to the west of the valley of
the Isère. The moraines of all those local glaciers, charged as they
are with the débris of the neighbouring heights, clearly indicate that
the local glaciers flowed each down its own particular valley. There
are certain other appearances, however, which seem at first sight to
contradict this view. Sometimes, for example, we encounter in the same
valleys erratics which do not belong to the drainage-system within
which they occur, but have without doubt been derived from the higher
Alps of Switzerland and Savoy. And the course followed by these foreign
erratics has crossed at all angles that which the local glaciers have
certainly pursued--occasionally, indeed, the one set of erratics has
travelled in a direction exactly opposed to the trend taken by the
others. As examples, I may cite the case of the erratics which occur
in Petit Bugey. In this district we encounter many locally-derived
erratics which have come from Mont du Chat to the west of the Lac
du Bourget--that is to say, they have travelled in a north-westerly
direction. But in the same neighbourhood are found many erratics of
Alpine origin which have been carried from north-east to south-west, or
at right angles to the course followed by the local erratics. Again,
in the valley of the Seran we have evidence in erratics and terminal
moraines of a local glacier which flowed south as far as the Lyons and
Geneva Railway, in the neighbourhood of which, a few miles to the west
of Culoz, its terminal moraines may be observed. This is the extinct
Glacier du Valromey of MM. Falsan and Chantre. Now it is especially
worthy of note that in the same valley we have distinct evidence of an
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