1895.] Mr. Clinton T. Dent on Mountaineering. 451 



WEEKLY EVENING MEETING, 



Friday, February 15, 1895. 



Hugo Muller, Esq. Ph.D. F.R.S. Vice-President, in the Chair. 

 Clinton T. Dent, Esq. F.R.C.S. M.B.I. 



Influence of Science on Mountaineering. 



Between mountaineering in general and climbing, which is but a 

 special branch of mountaineering, I desire for the purpose of this dis- 

 course to draw a clear distinction, but do not wish it to be supposed 

 that my dwelling chiefly on mountaineering implies any depreciation 

 of simple climbing. On the latter it is well nigh impossible to 

 break new ground, save in the geographical sense. The climbers of 

 mountains cannot justly be accused of any exaggerated tendency to 

 reticence as regards their adventures. The technique of climbing is 

 really simple, and considered as a craft, the subject has been fully 

 dealt with. Indeed, the general principles that the climber has to 

 bear in mind have been reduced to rules so few and so simple, that 

 many can quote, and a certain proportion can follow them. 



I desire chiefly to-night to dwell for a short time on the part 

 that science has played in developing the growth of mountaineering. 

 This has not been adequately recognised. The popularity of moun- 

 taineering during the last thirty-five years, the period of greatest 

 activity, has been too much laid to the credit of writers who have 

 regarded and described the Alps as a field for the best of recreations. 

 The more solid work was less before the world. Geologists and 

 botanists, from the first, found in the Alps a magnificent field for 

 pursuing their own branches of work ; but in the matter of physical 

 science the work done was speculative, not experimental. Men sought 

 for evidence for or against the Deluge, or elaborated vast hypotheses of 

 the earth's formation. They concerned themselves little with attempts 

 to explain the phenomena going on under their eyes, and there was 

 little original investigation. In old books on the Alps, statements, 

 often of the wildest nature, are found copied from one to another 

 without the slightest trace of acknowledgment. Men whose lines of 

 thought led them into the direction of physical research came late 

 into the field, but gradually their work attracted in some quarters the 

 attention due to a new departure. So there arose men who gathered 

 from the amassed knowledge of works of science such facts and 

 observations as might be turned to practical account in mountain 

 exploration. Thus was developed the scientific mountaineer, who, 

 on the mountains, could use his head as well as his limbs. He 

 might or might not be one who made science his prime object when 

 among the mountains. I am far from saying that this is the ordinary 



