172 LIFE OF HORACE BENEDICT DE SAUSSURE 



mediate precipice, d pic, of above 1000 feet, and behind me the very 

 steep ascent I had just surmounted. I was imprudently the first of 

 the company : the surprise was perfect horror, and two steps further 

 had sent me headlong from the rock.' 



In 1777 Shuckburgh published the result of his observations 

 in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. The 

 figure obtained by his triangulation was 4787 metres (15,705 feet). 

 De Saussure, by calculating his barometrical observations by four 

 different methods and taking the mean of them as his result, 

 succeeded, somewhat ingeniously, in arriving at about the same 

 figure, 2450 toises (15,667 feet). 



It may be of interest if I run over here some of the earlier 

 endeavours to determine the height of Mont Blanc. The 

 first attempt to measure ' the Hill called Cursed ' was made by 

 Nicolas Fatio de Duillier, and is thus recorded by Gilbert Burnet : 2 



' The hill not far from Geneva called Maudit or Cursed, of which 

 one-third is always covered with snow, is two miles of perpendicular 

 height, according to the observation of that incomparable Mathe- 

 matician and Philosopher, Nicolas Fatio Duillier, who at twenty-two 

 years of age is already one of the greatest men of his age, and seems 

 to be born to carry learning some sizes beyond what it has yet attained.' 



Fatio made the height 2000 toises above the Lake of Geneva, or 

 15,268 feet above sea-level. Nicolas Fatio was a Fellow of the 

 Royal Society. The next reference to hypsometry in its annals 

 is interesting as an indication of the rudimentary state of the 

 science in the earlier part of the eighteenth century. It is in the 

 form of an article by J. D. Scheuchzer, a son of J. J. Scheuchzer, 

 the author of the 'Ovpea-t^olrrj^ Helveticus.' 



The writer preludes as follows : 3 ' The height of mountains 

 and their elevation above the sea-level has been at all times 

 thought worthy of the attention of inquisitive philosophers.' 

 He then proceeds to refer to the fact that ' certain Greek philo- 



1 See Phil. Trans, of the Royal Society, vol. Ixvii. p. 592. 



2 Letters containing an account of what seemed most remarkable in Italy, 

 Switzerland, etc. (Rotterdam, 1686). Fatio's measurement is also referred to in 

 a work, Astro-Theology, by W. Derham (London, 1715), and in Spon's History of 

 Geneva, vol. ii. (Geneva, 1730). The later volume contains an article by N. 

 Fatio's brother, J. C. Fatio, 'Remarques faites sur 1'Histoire Naturelle des 

 Environs du Lac de Geneve.' 



3 Phil. Trans, of the Royal Society, Abridgement, vol. vii. p. 265. 



