84 Bylandfs Resume Preliminaire de VOwvrage 



To investigate this, the author visited all the mountain 

 chains of Europe, from the Caucasus to the Pyrenees, the 

 analysis of the latter of which, during two summers, he com- 

 pared with the studies of nine consecutive years amongst the 

 Alps. There he observed the play of the elementary fluids; 

 and noticing that the mountains possess a particular attrac- 

 tion from the west, declining to the south, and that it is imper- 

 ceptible to the east, and null towards the north, he discovered 

 that the electric fluid constantly follows the sun, rises with 

 him to the zenith, sinks with his rays, and disappears in his 

 absence, (p. 12.) This phenomenon attaches only to moun- 

 tains of the second and third classes as to height; for in 

 snow-clad mountains an electric current is perceptible from 

 N. to S. at from 7000 to 8000 feet, corresponding to the 

 latitude of from 60° to 70°. Now, the aurora borealis shows 

 that this fluid there abandons the globe, and therefore it 

 ought to bend from N. to S. at an angle of 45°. The tables 

 given by Franklin and Back show that the aurorae which 

 appear between 60° and 70° cease at 70°, and their axes 

 are directed to the S., reappearing at the equator, at the 

 height of 17,500 ft., under the name of the zodiacal light; which 

 exactly agrees with the inferences derived from the currents 

 in the polar seas, whose influence diminishes inversely with 

 the angle of direction, ceasing at 55'^ N. and 40° S, Hum- 

 boldt remarked the force of electricity at the height named ; 

 and M. de Bylandt on Mont Blanc, at 8700 ft., which cor- 

 responds therewith the latitude in question, (p. 13.) 



M. de Bylandt then states, that in 1818, at the height of 

 20,700 ft. under the equator, which correspond with 10,500 ft. 

 of Mont Blanc and 85° N. lat., the caloric had not enough 

 activity to form ice, but that above there was nothing but 

 perpetual snow. Parry, Heemskerke, Franklin, &c., are 

 brought in to show there is a great correspondence between 

 the glaciers of the Alps and the Polar Sea.* It seems that 

 our author compared his calculations with Captain Back's 

 at Naples, and also in London with those of Parry and 

 Franklin, and that the results were wonderfully coincident^ so 

 that be assumed the magnetic pole from 81° 57' to 83° N. 



* Of this the writer of these remarks has no doubt. The coast of 

 Greenland was first frozen up in the year 1348 (the year of the " black 

 death"), and in 1817 (the year of the cholera) that coast began to be 

 disengaged. Now records attest that, previously to 1348, a straight path 

 lay over Mont Blanc, where now the glaciers are, into Italy; and it is 

 known that recently there has been a diminution of ice and snow on the 

 same mountain. This is not the place to avail himself of the deduction 

 he wishes to draw ; but these facts correspond with the observations of 

 M. de Bylandt. — W, B, C, 



