Indeed the figure of a lake pouring itself over a rocky barrier which curves convexly upwards, thus causing the water to fall down it, not only longitudinally over the vertex of the curve, but laterally over its two arms, will convey a tolerably correct conception of the shape of the fall. Towards the centre the ice was powerfully squeezed laterally, the beds were bent, and their continuity often broken by faults. On inspecting the ice from a distance with my opera glass, I thought I saw structural groovings cutting the strata at almost a right angle. Had the question been an undisputed one, I should perhaps have felt so sure of this as not to incur the danger of pushing the inquiry further; but, under the circumstances, danger was a secondary point. Resigning, therefore, my glass to my guide, who was to watch the tottering blocks overhead, and give me warning should they move, I advanced to the base of the fall, removed with my hatchet the weathered surface of the ice, and found underneath it the true veined structure, cutting, at nearly a right angle, the planes of stratification. The superficial groovings were not uniformly distributed over the fall, but appeared most decided at those places where the ice appeared to have been most squeezed. I examined three or four of these places, and in each case found the true veins nearly vertical, while the bedding was horizontal. Having perfectly satisfied myself of these facts, I made a speedy retreat, for the ice-blocks seemed most threatening, and the sunny hour was that at which they fall most frequently. I next tried the ascent of the glacier up a dislocated declivity to the right. The ice was much riven, but still practicable. My way for a time lay amid fissures which exposed magnificent sections, and every step I took added further demonstration to what I had observed below. The strata were perfectly distinct, the structure equally so, and one crossed the other at an angle of seventy or eighty degrees. Mr. Sorby has adduced a case of the crumpling of a bed of sandstone through which the cleavage passes: here on the glacier I had parallel cases; the beds were bent and crumpled, but the structure ran through the ice in sharp straight lines. This perhaps was the most pleasant day I ever spent upon the glaciers: my mind was relieved of a long brooding doubt, and the intellectual freedom thus obtained added a subjective grandeur to the noble scene before me. Climbing the cliffs near the base of the Matterhorn, I walked along the rocky spine which extends to the Hoernli, and afterwards descended by the valley of Zmutt to Zermatt.