330 On the recent Change of Form of the Summit of Mont Blanc. 



reached the loftiest uncovered pinnacle of Mont Blanc towards 

 England, the land of our hopes, we selected a little spot, shel- 

 tered from the storm by incumbent masses of granite, and 

 there buried deep in the snow, an humble record, but sincere ; 

 hermetically sealed down by an icy plug, covered with a 

 winter's snow, and perhaps gradually incorporated into the 

 substance of a solid cube of ice, it may possibly remain un- 

 altered for many centuries, like the insects preserved in amber, 

 and so bear witness to distant generations, when other proud 

 memorials have crumbled into dust." 



But to return to our pyramid and the unexpected effect it 

 has produced. M. de Saussure and others have described 

 the summit of Mont Blanc as bearing the shape of a trian- 

 gular platform : this is certainly not the case at present ; for its 

 form, as described by Dr. Clarke, is thus given from a hint 

 offered to that gentleman by his companion Captain Sherwill : 

 " Suppose half an orange quite covered with melted sugar on 

 the outside, and compressed pretty strongly between the fin- 

 gers, you have thus a very tolerable imitation of the extreme 

 summit of Mont Blanc." May it not therefore be probable, 

 that the pyramid fixed there in 1811, having been overturned 

 by the storms, but not entirely carried away, has occasioned 

 an accumulation of snow around it, and thus totally changed 

 the triangular platform appearance described by the first vi- 

 sitors to this most elevated spot in Europe about five-and- 

 twenty years ago ? The change in the shape of the summit 

 is more likely to be the result of the fact thus described by the 

 falling of the pyramid, than of any simple and continued fall 

 of snow, which latter, before it becomes hardened by alternate 

 heat and cold, is constantly being swept from the platform by 

 every wind that blows, and thus tends to furnish the adjacent 

 glaciers with new matter, although perhaps in a" very small 

 degree. The writer of this article recommends to those of his 

 countrymen who should be induced to visit this spot, to cause 

 some of the most robust guides to search for the pyramid ; for 

 there is no reason why they should not be equally able to dig 

 in the ice as those guides who in 1811 carried it to the sum- 

 mit, and thus ascertain the truth of this proposition : but to 

 remove any part of it or of the gentleman's bottle would be 

 sacrilege. 



Geneva, 1831. M. S. 



LI. Notice 



