214 ANNUAL OP SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY. 



garded ; namely, that when portions of a thick bed had been entirely 

 removed, the weight of the remaining masses, pressing unequally on 

 the inferior beds, would, when these were soft, press them up into arched 

 conditions, like those of the floors of coal-mines in what the miners 

 called " creeps." More complex forms of harder rock were wrought 

 by the streams and rains into fantastic outlines : and the transverse 

 gorges were cut deep where they had been first traced by fault or dis- 

 tortion. The analysis of this aqueous action would alone require a 

 series of discourses ; but the sum of the facts was, that the best and 

 most interesting portions of the mountains were just those which were 

 finally left, the centres and joints as it were of the Alpine anatomy. 

 Immeasurable periods of time would be required to wear these away ; 

 and to all appearances, during the process of their destruction, others 

 were rising to take their place, and forms of perhaps far more nobly- 

 organized mountains would witness the collateral progress of humanity. 



THE FORMS AND WASTE OF ALPINE PEAKS. 



Mr. Whymper, a well-known Alpine explorer, in a letter to Prof. 

 Tyndall, thus describes his observations respecting the causes which 

 give form to, and at the same time tend to degrade, the prominent 

 peaks of the Alps. He says, The manner in which the peak of the 

 Matterhorn has been produced has given rise to much speculation 

 amongst geologists and others, but hardly any theory which has been 

 advanced can be regarded as satisfactory, while the simple agency of 

 frost does not seem to have been taken into sufficient consideration. 

 The enormous power brought into play by the action of fro'st, and its 

 influence in forming the outlines of mountains, more particularly the 

 Matterhorn, are subjects which recurred to me on this expedition on 

 many occasions. It was, indeed, impossible not to think about them. 

 Whence come these avalanches of rocks which fall continually, day 

 and night ? They fall from two causes : the first, and least powerful, 

 is the action of the sun, which detaches small stones or masses of rock 

 which have been arrested on ledges, and bound together by snow or 

 ice. Many times, when the sun has risen high, I have seen such re- 

 leased, fall gently at first, gather strength, and at last grow into a 

 shower of stones. The second, and by far the most powerful, is the 

 freezing of the water which has trickled during the day into the clefts 

 and crannies of the rock. This agency is, of course, most active in 

 the night, and then, or during very cold weather, the greatest falls take 

 place. It is not too much to say that I have, on several occasions, 

 seen hundreds of tons of rocks careering down one particular part of the 

 Matterhorn well known to all those who have attempted to ascend the 

 mountain. During seven nights which I have passed on it, at heights 

 varying from 11,500 to nearly 13,000 feet, the rocks have fallen inces- 

 santly in showers and avalanches. The greatest fall I have heard or 

 seen was at midnight in 1861. I was dozing in a blanket-bag, when 

 from high aloft there came a tremendous report, followed by a second 

 of perfect quiet. Then, mass after mass poured over the precipices, 

 the great rocks in advance, arid as they descended toward the place 

 where we lay in safety, we could hear them smiting each other, bound- 

 ing and rebounding from cliff to cliff, making a hurricane of sound, 

 the more impressive as the cause was invisible. It seemed to me, at 



