GLACIERS OF THE ALPS.
INTRODUCTORY.
(1.)
In the autumn of 1854 I attended the meeting of the British Association at Liverpool; and, after it was over, availed myself of my position to make an excursion into North Wales. Guided by a friend who knew the country, I became acquainted with its chief beauties, and concluded the expedition by a visit to Bangor and the neighbouring slate quarries of Penrhyn.
From my boyhood I had been accustomed to handle slates; had seen them used as roofing materials, and had worked the usual amount of arithmetic upon them at school; but now, as I saw the rocks blasted, the broken masses removed to the sheds surrounding the quarry, and there cloven into thin plates, a new interest was excited, and I could not help asking after the cause of this extraordinary property of cleavage. It sufficed to strike the point of an iron instrument into the edge of a plate of rock to cause the mass to yield and open, as wood opens in advance of a wedge driven into it. I walked round the quarry and observed that the planes of cleavage were everywhere parallel; the rock was capable of being split in one direction only, and this direction remained perfectly constant throughout the entire quarry.
CLEAVAGE OF SLATE ROCKS.
I was puzzled, and, on expressing my perplexity to my companion, he suggested that the cleavage was nothing more than the layers in which the rock had been originally deposited, and which, by some subsequent disturbance, had been set on end, like the strata of the sandstone rocks and chalk cliffs of Alum Bay. But though I was too ignorant to combat this notion successfully, it by no means satisfied me. I did not know that at the time of my visit this very question of slaty cleavage was exciting the greatest attention among English geologists, and I quitted the place with that feeling of intellectual discontent which, however unpleasant it may be for a time, is very useful as a stimulant, and perhaps as necessary to the true appreciation of knowledge as a healthy appetite is to the enjoyment of food.
On inquiry I found that the subject had been treated by three English writers, Professor Sedgwick, Mr. Daniel Sharpe, and Mr. Sorby. From Professor Sedgwick I learned that cleavage and stratification were things totally distinct from each other; that in many cases the strata could be observed with the cleavage passing through them at a high angle; and that this was the case throughout vast areas in North Wales and Cumberland. I read the lucid and important memoir of this eminent geologist with great interest: it placed the data of the problem before me, as far as they were then known, and I found myself, to some extent at least, in a condition to appreciate the value of a theoretic explanation.