1844.] STATE OF THE HER DE GLACE IN 1843. 37 



June, its motion had been scarcely perceptible. It farther 

 appeared, that the part of the glacier with which it had recently 

 been moving was so crevassed and steep, that the vast block 

 must have rolled and tossed about, or even been precipitated 

 occasionally forwards by the failure of the ice beneath it on the 

 steep, in a way which amply accounts for any want of regularity 

 in its winter progress, as indicated by Balmat's measurements. 

 It therefore became the more interesting and important to de- 

 termine with care the motion of a point of the glacier removed 

 from the accidental local influence of the sides and irregularities 

 of the surface, in order to compare the mean annual motion with 

 the summer motion of the ice. The " Pierre platte " was, in 

 every way, an unexceptionable landmark ; and I resolved to 

 cross the Mer de Glace for the purpose of accomplishing it 

 an exertion which I should hardly have ventured for a less inte- 

 resting result. In the course of this walk, which was fraught 

 with interest to me, as enabling me to compare the existing 

 condition of a glacier with the appearances which had been so 

 familiar to me just twelve months before, I found the state of 

 the ice just such as might be expected after a very severe and 

 snowy winter, and a very cold and late summer. The glacier 

 opposite the " angle " (station A), had now a much higher level 

 than it had at the same time in 1842 ; evidently, therefore, it 

 had, during the winter, regained its usual volume ; and then, 

 during the ensuing summer, it had wasted less than it had done 

 during the summer before. The glacier also bore other testi- 

 mony to the same circumstances ; for the crevasses were far 

 sharper and better defined, and the whole appearance of the 

 ice less collapsed, than at the same season in 1842. The sur- 

 face also at the " angle " was extensively covered with the 

 unmelted snow of the winter, which, as I have often observed, 

 never admits for a moment of being confounded with the matter 

 of the glacier. The general direction and appearance of the 

 crevasses, and of the position of the " moulins," was the same 

 as in 1842 ; as if the glacier had remained at rest, though it 

 had really moved some hundred feet forwards. - The moraines 



