SKETCH OF HEINRICH HERTZ. 409 



and the University of Bonn. It may be questioned whether such 

 utterances of sympathy and respect, much as they tend to make 

 mankind feel itself as one, can offer consolation to those whose 

 bereavement is greater than words are able to convey. However, 

 what Mr. Lowell said in one of his simple and admirable memo- 

 rial addresses is certainly true : 



" It may seem paradox, but the only alleviation of such grief 

 is a sense of the greatness and costliness of thte sacrifice that gave 

 birth to it, and this sense is brought home to us by the measure 

 in which others appreciate our loss." 



Prof. Hubert Ludwig, of Bonn, uttered the last farewell at the 

 grave of his friend and colleague. He expressed the sentiment of 

 those grieving at his bier in these final words : 



" This loss is so great that we are tempted to recall the old 

 saying of the envy of the gods. But in this solemn hour let us 

 resolutely banish such temptation, and instead of rebelling against 

 destiny, let us at the open grave of this God-inspired investigator 

 bow low our heads and hearts before the inscrutable." 



THE importance of mountaineering from a geographical point of view, as is 

 shown by Mr. Edward Swift Balch, in a paper on Mountain Exploration read be- 

 fore the Geographical Club of Philadelphia, is hardly understood by people in 

 general. How much has been done by mountaineers from a geographical, a sci- 

 entific, or an artistic impulse is hardly known, and the extent of field still open 

 for mountain exploration and observation is not really appreciated. This field, 

 represented by the mountains and mountain ranges in the five continents and the 

 islands, covers something like one sixth of the globe. The first undoubted ascent 

 of a glacier-bearing peak that of the Buet, by Jean Andre and Guillaume de 

 Luc, of Geneva, in 1770 was for the scientific purpose of making some experi- 

 ments on the atmosphere for Jean Andre's book, Researches on the Modifications 

 of the Atmosphere. The earliest ascents in central Switzerland were made by 

 monks in the love of geographical exploration ; and in the greatest of these 

 monks, Placidus a Spesclia, scientific knowledge and a love of mineralogy and 

 geology were added to a desire to know the boundaries and the formation of the 

 mountains with which he was immediately surrounded. Mont Blanc was first 

 ascended, with scientific ends, by the geologist De Saussure. In the record of the 

 contributions of mountaineering to science we have the studies of glacial phe- 

 nomena and the forms of water in ice and snow and clouds, made with care and 

 trouble by such men as Tyndall, Forbes, Agassiz, Escher von der Linth, and 

 Guyot, who have camped out on some occasions for weeks at a time; and the 

 famous expedition of 1842, when the movements of glaciers were practically first 

 determined, and when the investigators from Neuchatel lived on the ice for two 

 seasons, under the protecting shelter of a bowlder, which became known as the 

 ' H6tel des Neuch&telois." The geology of the mountains and their botany and 

 zoology have been studied. They have been utilized for astronomical and for 

 weather observations ; and the latest important attempt in this line is M. Jannsen's 

 establishment of an observatory on the summit of Mont Blanc. 



