It is scarcely possible to estimate the quantity of ice on the Alps; it is said, however, that, independent of the glaciers in the Grisons, there are 1500 square miles of ice in the Alpine range, from 80 to 600 feet thick. There are no glaciers east of the Great Glockner, except on the small group of Hallstadt. Thirty-four bound the snowy regions of Mont Blanc, and 95 square miles of snow and ice clothe that mountain. Some glaciers have been permanent and stationary in the Alps time immemorial, while others now occupy ground formerly bearing corn or covered with trees, which the irresistible force of the ice has swept away. These ice-rivers, formed on the snow-clad summits of the mountains, fill the hollows and high valleys, hang on the declivities, or descend by their weight through the transverse valleys to the plains, where they are cut short by the increased temperature, and deposit those accumulations of rocks and rubbish, called moraines, which had fallen upon them from the heights above; but their motion is so slow, that six generations may pass before a stone fallen on the upper end of a long glacier can reach the moraine. In the Alps, the glaciers move at the rate of from 12 to 25 feet annually, and, as in rivers, the motion is most rapid in the centre, and slower at the sides and bottom on account of friction. It is slower in winter, yet it does not cease, because the winter’s cold penetrates the ice, as it does the ground, only to a limited depth. Glaciers are not of solid ice; they consist of a mixture of ice, snow, and water; so that they are in some degree flexible and viscous, but acquire more solidity as they descend to lower levels; evaporation goes on at their surface, but they are not consumed by it. The front is perpetually melting, but maintains a permanent form; it is steep and inaccessible, owing to the figure of the ground over which it tumbles in its icy cascade, sometimes 1000 feet high. The middle course is rather level, the higher part very steep, and the surface is uneven and rent by crevices into which the purest blue streams fall in rushing cascades while the sun is up, but they freeze at his setting, and then a death-like silence prevails. The rocks and stones that fall on them from the surrounding heights protect the ice below from the sun which melts it all around, so that at last they rest on elevated pinnacles till they fall off by their weight, and in this manner those numerous pyramids are formed with which the surface is bristled. Throughout much of the length of a glacier the winter’s snow melts from its surface as completely as it does from the ground; it is fed from above, for in the upper part the snow never melts, but accumulates in a stratified form and is consolidated. In some of the largest glaciers, where there is a difference of 4000 feet in height between the origin and termination, the pressure is enormous and irresistible, carrying all before it; even