216 WAVES OF SAND AND SNOW 



as 12 inches collecting in one hour. The tem- 

 perature, I understand, often rises at such times 

 to near the melting-point, and the flakes are then 

 very large, as well as being adhesive. I stayed 

 nine days at Glacier House, in order to study the 

 snow -mushrooms, or caps, upon the tree-stumps. 

 When I first saw them from the train I thought 

 they might at any moment break under their own 

 weight and that they would be readily dislodged. 

 In fact, after passing through Glacier House to 

 Vancouver, whither I was bound, I took the long 

 journey back by the next train lest I should lose 

 a transitory opportunity. I found, however, that 

 the caps were so firm upon their pedestals that I 

 could not dislodge them, and I was assured by 

 the railway and hotel people, who were the only 

 inhabitants of the district, that the caps remain 

 to the end of the winter. I noticed, too, the 

 singular circumstance that all these hundreds of 

 snowcaps were perfect, none having broken by 

 their own weight. Yet their weight was some- 

 times as much as one ton, as I found by taking 

 their measurement and determining the specific 

 gravity of the snow. On driving a pole into a 

 snowcap I found that the material was neither 

 loose on the one hand nor icy on the other, but 

 tough and tenacious, which accounts for the diffi- 



