ITALY 135 



in the first volume of the Voyage en Italic of Lalande (1786), which, 

 though no doubt valuable at the time, does not now seem more 

 than an average encyclopaedia article ; and a Letter addressed 

 to Sir William Hamilton on ' La Geographic Physique d'ltalie,' 

 published in the seventh volume of the Journal de Physique. 

 They were both highly praised by a competent contemporary 

 critic Rome de 1'Isle. He wrote to de Saussure : 



' Your learned and luminous description of your Italian journey 

 reveals a profound naturalist. It sweeps away the empty hypotheses 

 of our geological theories as the north wind sweeps away the clouds 



which the western seas send us.' 



y 

 The following passage from the Letter may serve as a specimen 



of de Saussure's clear and complete method of scientific exposition : 



' All this vast plain of Lombardy, the greatest and the richest in 

 Europe, which, beginning at Turin, extends to Bologna, Ancona, and 

 Venice, is nothing else than the deposit of the rivers which descend 

 from the Alps and Apennines. These great streams, rapid at their 

 sources, tear up the surface of the ground and carry with them frag- 

 ments of the rocks ; but, gradually slackening their current, they 

 deposit in succession the material with which they are laden ; these 

 deposits are governed by the weight and the bulk of the material ; 

 the same stream which at Turin carries large stones, lays down on 

 the edge of the sea only sand and a fine and impalpable mud ; yet the 

 continual accumulation of this mud extends the borders of the dry 

 land, fills little by little the lagoons of Venice, and will end by one 

 day joining it to the Continent.' 



An event of a very serious and distressing character served 

 to hasten the de Saussures' return from Italy. The details given 

 here are borrowed from the work of the doctor who about this 

 date accompanied the Duke of Hamilton to Chamonix and the 

 Mer de Glace. 1 



In 1773 Jean Louis Tronchin, then a young man of twenty- 

 eight, the husband of de Saussure's younger sister-in-law, shot 

 himself in his own house, apparently without any warning. He 

 had been married only four years. Our countryman takes the 



1 His name was John Moore, M.D. He was a prolific writer and the father 

 of Sir John Moore, who died at Corunna. (See A View of Society and Manners 

 in France, Swtzerland, and Germany, by a Gentleman, London, 1779.) His 

 portrait was included in a group sold in the Hamilton sale at Christie's in November 

 1919. See also pp. 44, 129. 



