Glacier of Tale/re — Annual Molion. 145 



shewn in the Plate ; and I ascertained by the barometer the 

 difference of level of the two points, and also their elevation 

 above the sea. 



Height above 



the Sea. 

 English Feet. 



Knapsack lost, Glacier du Talefre, 29th July 1836, 8657 

 Knapsack found, Glacier du Lechaud, 24th July 1846, 7512 



This motion harmonises sufficiently well with the numbers 

 found in page 142, if we allow for the acceleration manifestly 

 due to the rapid declivity which commences immediately be- 

 low station W. 



This interesting discovery forms a curious pendant to the 

 history of De Saussure's ladder, believed to have been found 

 in fragments opposite Trelaporte, as fully detailed in my 

 Travels, page 86 ; but this new case is much better ascer- 

 tained in all its particulars. 



I may here mention, as the subject suggests it, another 

 proof of the extraordinarily conservative power of the ice 

 even upon the most seemingly destructible bodies. On the 

 20th July 1846, I found on the surface of the ice at station 

 Q (opposite the Glacier of Charmoz), all within a few feet of 

 each other, four of the small wooden pins which I had left 

 there in making the experiments in August 1844, described 

 in my Eighth Letter, a quantity of the thin string, and pieces 

 of the birch broom then used, and even a quantity of the loose 

 straw which I used to wrap round my shoes in cold weather. 

 These were neither decomposed nor blown away by the winds, 

 nor had they fallen into any of the numerous crevasses, but 

 were lying on the surface of the glacier (a very different sur- 

 face of course from that on which they had really been left), 

 as if they had been in use at most but a few weeks before. 



Glacier du Nant Blanc, — This is a small glacier descend- 

 ing from the foot of the Aiguille de Dru, exactly opposite the 

 Montanvert. I visited it for the first time in 1846. Its form 



VOL. XLII. NO. LXXXIII. — JANUARY 1847. K 



