CONDITION OF THE SNOW. 447 



to those who have had experience of Alpine "Tour- 

 mentes. " This is also the condition of the snow falling 

 during the intense cold accompanying blizzards, during 

 winter in the Hudson Bay Territory, and other parts 

 of the great plains of North America. It is called 

 "poudre" by the French Canadians, and is often al- 

 most as fine as flour; in this dry state it will neither 

 cake nor bind, and brushes off clothes without damping 

 them, exactly like dust. It is this sort of snow also 

 which forms what are known by Alpine guides as 

 " Staub Lawinen " or " dust avalanches. " * On ac- 

 count of its loose nature and lesser weight, these slides 

 of dust snow, though much more frequent and liable 

 to occur after every heavy fall of snow, are on the 

 whole less destructive than those formed of snow in a 

 more or less consolidated state. 



Many cases have been recorded for instance of men, 

 and especially of animals, that have been buried for 

 many days and even for weeks in dust snow, but have 

 eventually worked their own way out, or have been 

 rescued by searching parties. This is explained by the 

 quantity of air that is contained in loose snow, which 

 enables the entombed creature to breathe freely, whereas 

 living beings caught in slides of consolidated snow 

 (called " Grund Lawinen " in the Alps) are very generally 

 crushed to death by the weight of the moving 

 mass. 



When the sun by day and frost by night have had 

 time to act upon fallen snow it is gradually converted 

 into a heavy, white, opaque and granular mass, of great 

 weight, which frequently carries with it in its descent 



* See The Alpine Guide (to the Eastern Alps), by John Ball, F.R.S., 

 p. Ixviii. of Introduction. 



