nnection. Once familiar with these facts, it will not be difficult
correctly to appreciate the movement of the glacier and the cause of its
inequalities. We shall see, that, in consequence of the greater or less
rapidity in the movement of certain portions of the mass, its centre
progressing faster than its sides, and the upper, middle, and lower
regions of the same glacier advancing at different rates, the strata
which in the higher ranges of the snow-fields were evenly spread over
wide expanses, become bent and folded to such a degree that the
primitive stratification is nearly obliterated, while the internal mass
of the ice has also assumed new features under these new circumstances.
There is, indeed, as much difference between the newly formed beds of
snow in the upper region and the condition of the ice at the lower end
of a glacier as between a recent deposit of coral sand or a mud-bed in
an estuary and the metamorphic limestone or clay slate twisted and
broken as they are seen in the very chains of mountains from which the
glaciers descend. A geologist, familiar with all the changes to which a
bed of rock may be subjected from the time it was deposited in
horizontal layers up to the time when it was raised by Plutonic agencies
along the sides of a mountain-ridge, bent and distorted in a thousand
directions, broken through the thickness of its mass, and traversed by
innumerable fissures which are themselves filled with new materials,
will best be able to understand how the stratification of snow may be
modified by pressure and displacement so as finally to appear like a
laminated mass full of cracks and crevices, in which the original
stratification is recognized only by the practical student. I trust in
my next article I shall be able to explain intelligibly to my readers
even these extreme alterations in the condition of the primitive snow of
the Alpine summits.

* * * * *

TWO SCENES FROM THE LIFE OF BLONDEL.

SCENE I.--_Near a Castle in Germany._

'Twere no hard task, perchance, to win
The popular laurel for my song;
'Twere only to comply with sin,
And own the crown, though snatched by wrong:
Rather Truth's chaplet let me wear,
Though sharp as death its thorns may sting;
Loyal to Loyalty, I bear
No badge but of my rightful king.

Patient by town and tower I wait,
Or o'er the blustering moorland go;
I buy no praise at c