276 LIFE OF HORACE BENEDICT DE SAUSSURE 



Th^odulehorn (11,391 feet) were examined in detail. They sug- 

 gested to de Saussure by their strange juxtapositions of crystalline 

 rocks and micaceous sands and clays reflections on the limitations 

 of scientific inquiry. ' Who,' he asks, ' can by any probable 

 conjectures penetrate the night of Time ? Placed on this planet 

 since yesterday, and that only for a day, we can only aspire to 

 knowledge which in all probability we shall never attain to.' 



The same evening they descended to Breuil, and spent a day 

 in further exploring the immediate neighbourhood. De Saussure 

 calls attention to its botanical wealth, and gives a catalogue of 

 Alpine plants found there and in the Vispthal. He adds, ' What 

 makes it delightful to botanise on these mountains is that since 

 they are built of thin horizontal layers, of which the lower protrude 

 farthest, the plants grow as in a stepped rock-garden, within easy 

 reach of the eyes and hand of the collector, and the specimens 

 obtained are of an exceptional growth due to the nature of the soil.' 

 The geologist had not, we note, altogether abandoned his first love. 



The caravan next set out one wonders why to repeat their 

 passage of the Cimes Blanches (9777 feet) of the previous year. 

 As they mounted the broad pastures they came on several tarns 

 hidden in sheltered hollows, the clear waters of which reflected 

 the crags of the Matterhorn. A crowd of swallows had here found 

 a nesting -place at a very unusual height. A little higher they 

 encountered one of the great flocks of sheep, which, coming up from 

 their winter quarters in Lombardy or Provence, spend the summer 

 on the High Alps, blocking the road for miles in their spring and 

 autumn pilgrimages. Near the top of the pass de Saussure noticed 

 a glacier ending on the summit of a cliff over which the ice fell 

 constantly, forming at its base what has been termed by later 

 glacialists a glacier remanie. 



This seemed to de Saussure a favourable occasion to deal with 

 a German traveller named Plouquet, who had made a journey into 

 the Alps and written a book with the object of disproving the 

 onward movement of glaciers. Any reply, de Saussure says, 

 he had thought superfluous until one of the most esteemed 

 journals in Germany, the Literary Gazette of Jena, had endorsed 

 Plouquet by declaring that he had proved to its critic's satisfac- 

 tion that the movement of glacier ice was an absolute physical 

 impossibility. 



