GEOLOGY. 217 



seen m the "Nagelflue," the latter a much-debated question amongst 

 the geologists of Switzerland, Germany, and France. Proc. Royal 

 Society. 



GLACIAL MUMMIES. 



In the year 1844, a man of the commune of Passy, situated between 

 Chamounix and Sallenches, went on a pilgrimage of devotion to the 

 celebrated hospice of St. Bernard. He accomplished his journey, paid 

 his devotions at the perilous shrine, and returned by the mountain road 

 to Martigny, where he purchased at the fair then holding there a 

 large roll of cloth, which he intended to smuggle into Savoy, then be- 

 longing to Sardinia, while Martigny was, as now, in the canton of Val- 

 ais, in Switzerland. But the pilgrim of St. Bernard never reached his 

 home in Passy. His wife mourned his absence, the villagers wondered 

 for a few days, and gradually, as years glided along, he was compara- 

 tively forgotten, and his memory began to be lost in obscurity. 



During the last week of August, 1863, however, a hunter crossing 

 the glacier de Buet, while leaping a crevasse, had his attention attracted 

 by a dark object below, and peering down into the chasm, he saw, be- 

 neath a transparent sheet of pale blue ice, a human form laid as in an 

 icy sarcophagus ! The features were ruddy and natural, though in hor- 

 rid contrast to this were the eyeless sockets, whence the eyes had fallen 

 away. The astonished hunter hastened to inform the village authorities 

 of Chamounix of his discovery ; and on extricating the body it was 

 readily recognized as that of the long-lost merchant of Passy, and 

 more certainly identified by the roll of cloth bought nineteen years be- 

 fore at the Martigny fair, and which was lying near the glacier- 

 preserved corpse. It was evident that the smuggling mountaineer, in 

 trying to avoid the frontier authorities and regain his home by circuit- 

 ous Alpine passes, had fallen into some crevasse, and the slow motion 

 of the great glacier had gradually brought the lifeless, frozen body 

 down the slope of Mt. Blanc, to the point where it was discovered. 



In the Annual of Scientific Discovery for 18G2, page 306, an ac- 

 count was given of the discovery of a portion of .the body of one of 

 the three guides who perished in 1820, while attempting the ascent of 

 -Mt. Blanc with Dr. Hammel, a Russian scientist. This body in 1861, 

 after an entombment of forty years in the ice, was, by the movement of 

 the glacier des Boissons, thrown out near its base, in a state of remark- 

 able preservation, though mutilated. During the past summer, addi- 

 tional remains of one of these guides have been ejected by the moving 

 glacier, namely, a foot covered with flesh and adhering by the nerves 

 to a dried up thigh-bone. By the side of the foot was found a compass, 

 probably that of the doctor, and carried by the guide Auguste Tairraz, 

 as stated by the surviving guides, which fact leaves but little doubt 

 of the identity of the limb now found. Strange to say, it was the 

 grandson of Tairraz who discovered it. A shirt-sleeve of one of the 

 victims was found in a crevasse, but the arm which it once protected, 

 being a thicker and larger substance, will, it is predicted, not be recov- 

 ered for two or three years yet. All the remains above referred to 

 were buried at Chamoimix, with appropriate religious services. In this 

 connection, the following account, published by Dr. Hammel in 1820, of 



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