In 1858, the Birmingham Daily Post published a summary of a lecture given by Mr W. Mathews Jr., on the 'Glaciers of Switzerland'. According to the article, Mathews' lecture had discussed the existing theories regarding glacial motion, and argued that the theory of John Tyndall and Thomas Huxley which build upon a series of observations by Faraday was better than the proposed theory of Professor James Forbes called the 'Viscous Theory'. This article in the Birmingham Daily Post was representative of a larger debate within the periodical press. The topic of glacial motion received a significant amount of press coverage in Britain in the years that followed. With the publication of John Tyndall's Glaciers of the Alps (1860), the disagreements between Tyndall and Forbes took centre stage. Building upon recent Tyndall scholarship and the vast historiography of periodical studies and environmental history, this paper will show how the dispute between Tyndall and Forbes was represented in the British periodical press. One of the main points that I will demonstrate in this paper is the importance of taking into consideration the reading audiences in the formation and institutionalization of science. This builds upon the work of Jonathan Topham and James Secord; in addition to books such as Science Serialized (2004), Science in the Nineteenth-Century Periodical (2004) and Culture and Science in the Nineteenth-Century Media (2004) where the dissemination of science through the periodical press is examined. It also connects to Graeme Gooday and Katharine Anderson's work that has shown the complex interrelations between the development of physics and religion and politics, and the role different kinds of media (such as periodicals) play in promoting specific views on meteorology. This paper will take into consideration the contest for authority and expertise in relation to the debate between Forbes and Tyndall as it was manifested in the periodical press. In doing so, it will draw comparisons between the arguments put forth in Tyndall's own scholarship on glacial motion, and those examined in the periodical press.