io8 FROM AN EASY CHAIR 



note that the cessation of selection is more complete, 

 and the consequent degeneration of the race would, 

 therefore, seem to be more probable in the higher pro- 

 pertied classes than in the bare-footed toilers, whose 

 ranks are thinned by starvation and early death. One 

 may well ask, " Is this really so ? " 



38. The Movement, Growth, and Dwindling of Glaciers 



Last summer we were watching the gradual change 

 of the brilliant sunlight on the snows of Mont Blanc 

 as the shadows crept up the pine-covered sides of the 

 valley of Chamonix. We noted how the highest peak 

 the true summit of Mont Blanc remained almost 

 white and brilliant when the somewhat lower and 

 nearer Dome de Gouter (so often, when clouds are 

 about, mistaken for the true summit by tourists) had 

 assumed a marvellous shade of saffron-rose colour. The 

 crevasses of the glaciers were marked by an unearthly 

 pale-green tint and delicate purple hues of weird beauty 

 were spreading over the evanescent forms of the great 

 snow-field, when one of the hotel guests a citizen 

 of Geneva said, " Ah, yes ! Look at them whilst 

 you may, and wonder at them, those glaciers of the 

 Alps. They are but the remnants, the roots, as it 

 were, of the vast glacier which once filled the whole 

 of this vale of Chamonix and spread down into the 

 valley of the Rhone, and ploughed out with the slow 

 movement of its huge mass the deep rock basin of 

 the Lake Leman. Every year they dwindle, as they 

 have dwindled for ages past, and soon perhaps not 

 more than another 100 years hence they will have 

 disappeared utterly from human sight and knowledge." 

 I continued to gaze at the scene, and as the night 



