FORERUNNERS 17 



Alps for further contributions that may help to give his volumes 

 greater completeness in future issues. He proposes first to 

 describe the Alps in history and nature, and then to deal with 

 the physical problems they suggest, and in doing so to aim at 

 plain description rather than fine writing at exactitude rather 

 than novelty. 



The late Professor Bernard Studer, a very competent critic, 

 passes an impartial judgment on the Eisgebirge. 1 



' Griiner,' he writes, ' by his industry has done good service to 

 Natural Science in Switzerland. But, since his information was 

 mostly indirect, gathered from correspondence or by word of mouth, 

 and his own knowledge in Physics and the Natural Sciences was super- 

 ficial, no thorough treatment of his subject must be looked for. Still 

 his was the first successful attempt to produce a comprehensive survey 

 of the Swiss Alps.' 



Studer goes on to praise Griiner's mineralogical chapters and 

 to refer to his Theory of Glacier Motion, borrowed from two 

 earlier authors, Hottinger and Altmann. 2 Griiner alleged that 

 the advance of the ice was caused by its weight rather than, as 

 had been suggested, by expansion due to summer warmth. 

 Griiner's generalisations, when he went beyond local details, were 

 apt to be unlucky ; for instance, he imagined a continuous sea 

 of ice extending from the Rheinwaldhorn to Mont Blanc. The 

 topography of the Aar Glaciers was too much for him. Even 

 nearer home he is badly at fault. The Susten Pass he describes 

 as too steep for travellers with weak heads ; the Wengern Alp as 

 dangerous. Lack of method and critical power in the author 

 result in his failure to weld his material so as to produce a satis- 

 factory work. But such as they were, his volumes held the field. 

 Their success encouraged Griiner to produce in 1778 (anony- 



1 Physische Geographic der Sckweiz, B. Studer, Bern, Zurich, 1863. B. Studer 

 was a friend of Professor Forbes, who dedicated to him his work on the Alps. 



2 J. H. Hottinger' s tract is entitled Montium Glacialium Hdveticorum De- 

 scriptio. Ephemerid. Mediate, Physicae, Germanicae Academiae naturae curio- 

 sorum, Decuriae in., Annus nonus et decimus, Norimburgae, 1706. 



J. G. Altmann, in 1751, published, at Zurich, a work with the ambitious title, 

 Versuch einer historischen und physischen Beschreibung der Helvetischen Eisberge. 

 The original portion of it consists of the description of a visit to Grindelwald, of 

 which a recognisable engraving is supplied. He considers the glaciers to be the 

 outflow of a central ice-sea. His ideas as to the structure of the ice and the 

 conditions of its movement are very crude. 



B 



