. . .I thank you most sincerely for the pains you have so kindly
taken with my proof, and for pointing out the faults and omissions
you have noticed in my register of birds. I made the corrections at
once, and have taken the liberty of mentioning on the cover of this
number the share you have consented to take in my Nomenclator. I
shall try to do better and better in the successive classes, but
you well know the impossibility of avoiding grave errors in such a
work, and that they can be wholly weeded out only in a second and
third edition. I should have written sooner in answer to your last,
had not your letter reached me on the Glacier of the Aar, where I
have been since the beginning of July, following up observations,
the results of which become every day more important and more
convincing. The most striking fact, one which I think I have placed
beyond the reach of doubt, is the primitive stratification of the
neve, or fields of snow,--stratified from the higher regions across
the whole course of the glacier to its lower extremity. I have
prepared a general map, with transverse sections, showing how the
layers lift themselves on the borders of the glacier and also at
their junction, where two glaciers meet at the outlet of adjoining
valleys; and how, also, the waving lines formed by the layers on
the surface change to sharper concentric curves with a marked axis,
as the glacier descends to lower levels. For a full demonstration
of the matter, I ought to send you my map and plans, of which I
have, as yet, no duplicates; but the fact is incontestable, and you
will oblige me by announcing it in the geological section at Padua.
M. Charpentier, who is going to your meeting, will contest it, but
you can tell him from me that it is as evident as the
stratification of the Neptunic rocks. To see and understand it
fully, however, one must stand well above the glacier, so as to
command the surface as a whole in one view. I would add that I am
not now alluding to the blue and white bands in the ice of which I
spoke to you last year; this is a quite distinct phenomenon.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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