1846.] MOTION OF GLACIER OF TALEFRE CURIOUS INCIDENT. 193 



Being examined on the 31st July, after a lapse of six days 

 and seventeen hours, the motions were found to have been 



No. (1.) No. (2.) No. (3.) 



Ft. In. Ft. In. Ft. In. 

 July 24, 5 P.M., to July 31, 10 A.M. 7 2-5 8 9-0 7 2'5 



Or daily in INCHES . . 12-9 15-7 12'9 



By a remarkable coincidence, the 1st and 3d stations had been 

 so symmetrically chosen, as to have precisely the same velocity. 

 The middle point, as usual, moved fastest. 



This velocity will be considered to be large when we recollect 

 the great height of the glacier above the sea, and the small incli- 

 nation of its surface at this place. On the other hand, it is a 

 natural consequence of the theory which regards this narrow 

 outlet as the overflow of a vast reservoir, in which snow has 

 peculiar facility in accumulating.* 



T shall now mention a truly remarkable circumstance connected 

 with the velocity of the discharge of the icy stream which empties 

 the basin of Talefre. I was apprised by David Couttet, on the 

 23d July last, on his return from looking for crystals on the 

 moraines of the Glacier of Talefre, that he had found opposite 

 to Les Egralets (see the map), or where the ice of the Talefre 

 joins the Glacier de Lechaud, some fragments of a knapsack 

 lying on the ice, which he at once recognised to be the same 

 as had been lost by a guide some years before, who fell into a 

 crevasse, where he had nearly perished, in conducting a traveller 

 to the Jardin. Couttet rightly believed that the determination 

 of the motion of the ice in the interval, since the loss of the 

 knapsack, would be a matter of interest to me. 



At the same time, the seeming improbability of recovering 

 so destructible a material as a bag or knapsack, made of cloth, 

 after remaining for ten years in the bowels of a glacier, was so 

 great as to make me resolve to investigate the matter thoroughly 

 whilst on the spot. 



The next day I went to the Glacier of Talefre, accompanied 



* [And, perhaps, it might be added, of the proximity of the ice-fall in front, 

 diminishing the frontal resistance.] 







