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IX. Recent Discovery of the Ladder o/'M. cle Sa assure in the 



Mer de Glace ; wil/i Inferences respecting the Progressive 



Movement of Glaciers. 

 [We have been favoured with the following paragraph from the Journal dc 



Gcnlvc, to which arc added a few observations by an English gentleman 



resident in that town. EDIT.] 



"HPHE ladder which M. de Saussure used in crossing the 

 crevices in the ice during his first visit to the Col du 

 Geant, and which he left on the upper part of the glacier, 

 has lately been discovered imbedded in the Mer de Glace, in 

 a situation nearly opposite to the aiguille called Le Moine. 

 This ladder, moving on with the body of the ice, will thus 

 appear to have advanced three leagues since the year 1787." 



M. Plouquet, a German writer, published some years since 

 a pamphlet in which he endeavoured to prove that the pro- 

 gressive movement of the glaciers was a thing physically im- 

 possible. If M. Plouquet, or the editor of the Literary Ga- 

 zette of Jena, in which paper appeared a confirmation of his 

 statement, could visit the spot where the immortal De Saus- 

 sure's ladder now is, and still persist in the opinion that the 

 progressive movement of the glaciers is a thing physically im- 

 possible, we think we should be able to combat that opinion 

 by the following observations, and by the experiment which 

 has been renewed at the instigation of Captain Sherwill at 

 the Mer de Glace, as stated by that gentleman in his "Ascent 

 of Mont Blanc." 



There are in the neighbourhood of Mont Blanc and else- 

 where, many glaciers which terminate at the edge of a preci- 

 pice, where may be seen walls of ice from one to two hundred 

 feet perpendicularly high. From these walls immense blocks 

 of ice detach themselves frequently in the course of a day 

 and fall over the precipice, separating in their course, and 

 thus dissolve according to the season of the year. 



Who then will doubt that the ice is continually projected 

 forward from the tipper to the lower part of the glacier, and that 

 the main body thus pushing on causes the fall of these masses 

 over the frightful precipice. But let us take another proof: 

 the blocks of granite and other large stones seen riding on the 

 surface of the glaciers, and which in the end arrive in the 

 valleys that receive the waters of these eternal reservoirs, how 

 comes it that these granite blocks descend from an elevation 

 of ten or fifteen thousand feet, if it were not that the body on 

 which they are placed was in continual, though to the eye 

 imperceptible motion ? These facts would rather prove that 

 the quiescent state of the glaciers would be a thing physically 

 impossible. 



Captain 



