rci 



AUXILIARY VERBS. 



AVALANCHES. 



762 



existing forms amastim, amaverim, amarim; and in amaivsim we see 

 the full form aim which preceded sim. We have left out amavi from 

 the series, solely because it would require some space to demonstrate 

 what is yet undoubted, that here too the verb es, be, entered. Indeed, 

 in the form amunstis we have all we need desire. Probably we ought 

 to have divided the Latin forms just quoted so as to give the v to the 

 suffix, ama-veram, in which case the Latin perhaps exhibits what is 

 virtually the w of weten and vat. 



After the verb to be, the next in importance among the auxiliaries is 

 the verb kabe-re, Latin, to have ; in German, hab-en. Like the pre- 

 ceding verb, this also has undergone great corruptions. In the 

 English hast, hat, had, the main consonant has already disappeared. 

 While in the Italian ho, from the Latin habeo, we find nothing of the 

 root but the aspirate, and even that is often omitted, so that we should 

 doubt the connection between the words, but for the first and second 

 persons plural. But as we shall have further occasion for the forms of 

 this verb in the Roman languages of Europe, we will place here the 

 present tenses : 



Latin, habeo, habea, habet; habemua, habetis, habent. 



Italian, ho, hai, ha; abbiamo, avete, hanno. 



Spanish, he, has, ha; habemos or he'mos, habe'is, han. 



French, ai, as, a; avuns, avez, ont. 



The use of the verb to Jtare in the formation of the perfects, so 

 universal in the modern languages derived from Latin, may be occa- 

 sionally seen in the parent language also, where such phrases as furem 

 cowtrictum habeo, furet constrictos habeo, differ but slightly in meaning 

 from furem constrinxi, &c. ; and there was the greater necessity for 

 adopting a new formation, as the Latin perfect unites two tenses in 

 itoelf , namely, the aorist and the present-perfect. It will be seen too 

 from the examples which we have given, why, in the derived tongues, 

 the participle in some cases agrees with the accusative ; as je let ai tiifs. 

 But the use of habeo as an auxiliary is not confined to the perfect 

 tenses. In connection with the infinitive it forms a convenient peri- 

 phrasis for a future. From the Italian infinitive scntir, we have a 

 future sentir-o, -ai, -a, -emo, -etc, -anno, the first and second persona 

 plural, now they are used as suffixes, being reduced as completely as 

 the rest. In the Spanish verb hoMdr the future is hablar-e, -as, -a, 

 -(mot, -ta, -an ; and in the French from tentir there ia formed ientir-ai, 

 at, -a, -ws, -ez, -ont. In the tense called generally the conditional, 

 the infinitive is again employed. The Italians unite with it their 

 perfect tense of to have, derived from habui, namely, ebbi, aresti, ebbe, 

 urtmrno, areste, ebbero ; and their conditional is ientir-ci, -ati, -ebbe, 

 -emmo, -este, -ebbero. On the other hand, the French employ avois, 

 which may be proved to have been derived from the Latin imperfect 

 habebam ; but as arons, avez, of the present dropped their radical 

 letters av, when attached as suffixes to the future, so also aroit, &c., 

 throughout lose the same letters hi forming the conditional, thus, scnlir- 

 oii, -oil, -nit, -ions, -iez, -oient. The Spanish language, in like manner, 

 employs the imperfect habla, habtui, habia, habiamos, hablais, habian, 

 derived also from habebam, &c. ; and thus, with the same suppression 

 of the first two letters, the conditional of hablar is hablar-ta, -lag, -ia, 

 -lamia, -tait, -Ian. This view of the formation of the future* is of 

 service in explaining the apparent irregularities so often found in those 

 tenses, which moreover generally extend to the infinitive. This explana- 

 tion of the futures and conditionals in these three languages we take 

 from the writings of the French philologist Raynouard. 



Many other verbs of the Latin language have become auxiliaries in 

 the derived languages : 1. Vado, Lat. / go, is employed thus by the 

 Italians, as to to faciendo, I am doing ; and in French for a future, je 

 rait parler, I am yoing to speak. 2. Venio, Lat. / come, in Italian as 

 an equivalent for the verb to be, egli rien riputato, he it contidered ; in 

 French to denote an action just passed, it nent de trourer, he has just 

 found. S. Ambula-re, Lat. to walk (corrupted into the Italian andare and 

 the French oiler), is used in the former language thus, andra rovinato, 

 he trill be ruined; and hi the French, il alluit dtner, he wot going to dine. 

 4. Sta-re, Lat. to stand, in Italian tono ttato, I have been, sta scrivendo, he 

 it wiling ; and the French (toil or dais (formerly estois) is a corruption 

 from ttabam, precisely as aimois from amabam. The Spaniards, besides 

 several of the auxiliaries here mentioned, use tener, derived from the 

 Latin tene-re, to hold, but not exactly as an auxiliary verb : and besides 

 ter, to be, they have estar, to be, from the Latin stare. In the Teutonic 

 languages the auxiliary verbs are very numerous, and our own language 

 contains nearly the whole of them : 1. may, might, are the present and 

 perfect of the same defective verb. In the German we find an infini- 

 tive of this verb mog-en, as well as the forms mag, and mochte ; 2. can 

 and could correspond to the German k-ann and konnte from the infinitive 

 io/i n-tn ; 3. will and would to the German will and wollte from woll-en ; 

 4. shall and should to toll and tollte from toUcn, originally meaning 

 to owe. 



"But though the German auxiliaries correspond with the English as 

 to their having a common origin, they have a use which is not quite 

 the same. " In general, possibility is expressed by kSnnen, d&rfen (the 

 English dare, durst), mjigen, and necessity by miissen (the English must), 

 Kllen, wollen ; latten (the English let) implies necessity as well as 

 possibility." (Becker's ' German Grammar,' p. 66.) The German word 

 haben, like the corresponding English have, and the German wtrden, 



when used alone, are notional verbs, or verbs expressing a distinct 

 notion and not a mere relation : thus we can say, er wird reich, he 

 becomes rich ; but in the expressions ich werde Icommen, I will come, die 

 frage wird von Him beantu-ortet, the question is answered by him, the 

 verb werden is used as an auxiliary for the future tense and the passive 

 voice respectively. 



AVALANCHES are the most dangerous and terrible phenomena to 

 which the Valleys embosomed between high, snow-topped mountain 

 ranges are exposed. They are especially frequent in the Alps, owing 

 to the steepness of their declivities, but they are also known in other 

 mountain regions, as in the Pyrenees, in Norway, and in the Himalaya. 

 They originate in the higher region of the mountains, when the accu- 

 mulation of snow becomes so great that the inclined plane on which the 

 mass rests cannot any longer support it. It is then pushed down the 

 declivity by its own weight, and precipitated into the subjacent valley, 

 where it often destroys forests and villages, buries men and cattle, and 

 sometimes fills up the rivers and stops their course. Besides these 

 destructive effects, it has been stated that persons are often killed and 

 houses overthrown by the sudden compression of the'air, caused by the 

 incredible velocity with which these enormous masses finally descend. 

 But thia subj ect does not appear to have been philosophically examined ; 

 the statement must be regarded as doubtful. 



Four different kinds of avalanches may be distinguished : drift 

 avalanches, rolling avalanches, sliding avalanches, and glacier or ice 

 avalanches, of which the first commonly take place in the early part of 

 winter, the second and third at the end of winter and in spring, and 

 the last only in summer. 



The drift or loose snow avalanches (called, in Switzerland, staub- 

 Uuinen) take place when heavy snow has fallen in the upper region of 

 the mountains during a still calm, and this accumulated mass, before 

 it acquires consistency, is put in motion by a strong wind. The snow 

 is driven from one acclivity to another, and so enormously increased 

 in its progress, that it brings down an incredible volume of loose snow, 

 which often covers great part of a valley. The damage caused by these 

 avalanches^ is, however, generally not very great, because most of the 

 object* covered by them may be freed from the snow without having 

 sustained great damage ; but they are said often to produce such a com- 

 pression of the air that houses are overturned, and men and cattle 

 suffocated. This latter effect, if rightly attributable to such a cause, 

 has not yet been explained. 



The rolling avalanches are much more dangerous and destructive. 

 These take place when, after a thaw, the snow becomes clammy, and 

 the single grains or flocks stick to one another, so as to unite by the 

 process of regulation, first recognized by Faraday and since investigated 

 by Tyndall [Ice,] into large hard pieces which commonly take the 

 form of balls. Such a ball, moved by its own weight, begins to descend 

 the inclined plane, and all the snow it meets in its course downwards 

 sticks firmly to it. This snow-mass, increasing rapidly in its progress, 

 and descending with great velocity, covers, destroys, or carries away 

 everything that opposes its course trees, forests, houses, and rocks. 

 This is the most destructive of avalanches, and causes great loss of life 

 and property. In the year 1749, the whole village of Rueras, in the 

 valley of Tawich, in the canton of the Grisons, was covered, and at the 

 same time removed from its site, by an avalanche of this description ; 

 but this change, which happened in the night time, was effected with- 

 out the least noise, so that the inhabitants were not aware of it, and 

 on awaking in the morning could not conceive why it did not grow 

 day. A hundred persons were dug out of the snow, sixty of whom 

 were still alive, the interstices between the snow containing sufficient 

 air to support life. In the spring of 1755, after a very low barometer, 

 and enormous falls of rain in the plains and snow in the mountains of 

 Piedmont, many destructive avalanches took place, by which two 

 hundred persons were killed. One of them, on the 19th of March, 

 overwhelmed the village of Bergemoletto, in a manner fatal to many of 

 the inhabitants ; but two women and a girl, who had taken shelter from 

 the rigour of the weather in a stable, after remaining under the mass of 

 snow for thirty-seven days, were dug out alive, and eventually recovered 

 from the effects of their confinement and privations. The avalanches of 

 the Savoy Alps, and the circumstances of this event, are described in 

 a somewhat celebrated Italian work by Ignazio Somis, Professor of 

 Medicine in the University of Turin, and physician to Charles Emanuel 

 III. king of Sardinia, published at Turin in 1758, and of which an 

 English translation appeared in 1765. He enters into a physiological 

 and experimental investigation of the case, and of the condition of 

 the sufferers, both during and after their misfortune, ascribing their 

 preservation to the continual disengagement of fresh air from the 

 melting snow ; and as it has been proved that the ah" in melted snow 

 and in rain water contains much more oxygen than that of the atmos- 

 phere, it is probable that this assisted to counteract the effects of 

 want of ventilation, and that therefore Somis was right in his conclusion, 

 though the state of pneumatic chemistry at the tune precluded his 

 knowing all the facts of the casa. In 1806, an avalanche descended 

 into Val Calanca, likewise in the canton of the Grisons, transplanted a 

 forest from one side of the valley to the other, and placed a fir tree on 

 the roof of a parsonage-house. In 1820, sixty-four persons were killed 

 in Fettan, in the high valley of Engadin, in the country of the Grisons; 

 and, in the same year, eighty-four persons and four hundred head 

 of cattle, in Obergeutelen, and twenty-three persons at Brieg, both 



