You have seen the same curious
twisting of the gravel and sand into each other on the top of Farley
Hill, and in the new cutting on Minley Hill; and, best of all, in the
railway cutting between Ascot and Sunningdale, where upon the top the
white sand and gravel is arranged in red and brown waves, and festoons,
and curlicues, almost like Prince of Wales's feathers. Yes, that last is
a beautiful section of ice-work; so beautiful, that I hope to have it
photographed some day.
Now, how did ice do this?
Well, I was many a year before I found out that, and I dare say I never
should have found it out for myself. A gentleman named Trimmer, who,
alas! is now dead, was, I believe, the first to find it out. He knew
that along the coast of Labrador, and other cold parts of North America,
and on the shores, too, of the great river St. Lawrence, the stranded
icebergs, and the ice-foot, as it is called, which is continually forming
along the freezing shores, grub and plough every tide into the mud and
sand, and shove up before them, like a ploughshare, heaps of dirt; and
that, too, the ice itself is full of dirt, of sand and stones, which it
may have brought from hundreds of miles away; and that, as this
ploughshare of dirty ice grubs onward, the nose of the plough is
continually being broken off, and left underneath the mud; and that, when
summer comes, and the ice melts, the mud falls back into the place where
the ice had been, and covers up the gravel which was in the ice.
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