154 LIFE OF HORACE BENEDICT DE SAUSSURE 



presented to him in a handsome binding, that had caused the 

 accident, it must be laid to the charge ' of the frightful luxury 

 of you Genevese.' De Saussure comments thus on the scene: 

 ' Comme je fus grond6 par ce bon ecctesiastique et quel plaisir 

 me fit cette scene, digne de la plume de Sterne et du pinceau 

 d'Hogarth.' l Clement must have been a most attractive character. 

 His friend the Doyen Bridel describes him thus : 



' A discreet and modest priest, a benefactor of the poor and the 

 rich, a trusty and disinterested friend, an indefatigable worker, he 

 earned the esteem and regret of all who knew him. His library, the 

 richest in Vallais, specially in natural history and languages, was all 

 he possessed, and his only pleasure.' 



The last group of tours the only one mainly in the Swiss 

 Alps dealt with in the Voyages is introduced by de Saussure 

 in the following terms : 2 



' My third journey, which includes the crossing of the Alps by the 

 Gries, the Grimsel, and the Furca del Bosco, seems to me, I must 

 confess, interesting as a whole, at any rate for those who are in the least 

 curious as to the natural history of mountains. 



' These great mountain ranges of granite, whether solid or foliated, 

 of which I have studied the structure with the greatest care, the 

 magnificent horizontal beds of the veined granites of St. Roch, the 

 great and singular exfoliations of these granites, the progressive 

 change in the nature of their upper beds arising from their more recent 

 date, seem to me facts of the greatest importance for the Theory. 



' And readers who have no taste for geology will, I trust, read 

 with pleasure of the source of the Rhone, its glacier, that of the Gries, 

 and the other grand and beautiful scenes presented by nature in this 

 savage and little-known region. 



' As to the Theory, I have in this volume followed the same method 

 as in the preceding ones : I have laid down principles as I observed the 

 facts which seemed to me to establish them. But of a complete 

 system I suspend any publication. I wait in order to make the obser- 

 vations I have planned and of which I have need in order to decide 

 questions which seem to me still problematic. 20th November 1795.' 



In truth, as a careful reader will note, de Saussure thinks 

 as well as observes as he proceeds. He not infrequently makes, 

 almost as an aside, some important scientific induction. 



1 Wolf's BiograpJiien zur Kulturgeschichte der Schweiz, vol. iii. (Zurich, 1868). 

 8 Preface to vol. iii. 



