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CHAMBERS’S JOURNAL
OF
POPULAR
LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART.
CONTENTS
A GLACIER GARDEN.
ONE WOMAN’S HISTORY.
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN ANGLO-INDIAN CHAPLAIN.
COLONEL REDGRAVE’S LEGACY.
A SAMPLE OF MARSALA.
CONCERNING FLORIDA.
ARSENIC IN DOMESTIC FABRICS.
WASHING BY STEAM.
PARTING WORDS.
No. 50.—Vol. I.
Price 1½d.
SATURDAY, DECEMBER 13, 1884.
A GLACIER GARDEN.
The glacier garden lies far away on a steep hillsideby the Lake of the Forest Cantons. Closeto the picturesque town of Lucerne, a little pathleads past the sandstone crag on which is hewnThorwaldsen’s famous monument, to the smallinclosed space, overshadowed by trees, where haverecently been discovered vestiges of the mostremote days in the youth of our old mother-earth.Hidden away amongst tangled fern and brightgreen grass, we see huge surfaces of native rock,some furrowed with parallel lines, others, withcurious petrifactions of the sea; and giant boulderssmoothed and polished that do not in the leastresemble the surrounding rocks, but which aretravellers from the Alps, left stranded here bythe glaciers in the last great Ice Age. It isindeed a wonderful garden, with a wonderfulhistory, and although, as unscientific observers, wecannot trace the different phases of its developmentin the dim geological past, still, standingby these gray old stones on which have beenlaid the softening and romantic influences ofcountless ages, it is as if we had pages of theworld’s history unrolled before our eyes.
The proofs of past glaciers are all around usin the grindings and scratchings on the rocks—inthe ice-worn stones—and still more in thedeep smooth circular hollows, which are perhapsthe most perfect known specimens of the singularphenomena called glacier-mills. These erosionshave been found also in Scandinavia and inthe Jura Mountains, and are caused by the rapidwhirling of a stone by a stream from the meltingice, which in the course of ages scoops out everdeeper and wider these cavities in the rock.But in this little garden we can trace the originof the glacier-mills, from the tiny erosion justcommenced, to the grand basin, twenty feet indiameter, and more than thirty feet deep, onwhose smooth walls are clearly marked the spiralwindings caused by the whirling of the stoneperpetually from east to west. If you take upthe glacier