Ice and its Natural History 263 



completely macerated, leaving its skeleton in a broken-up 

 condition. I was unable to arrive at a satisfactory solution 

 of how these animals had met their death. It was evident, 

 however, that beasts or birds of prey must be rare, else the 

 remains would not have been so preserved. As a souvenir, 

 I collected a number of the vertebrae of the macerated in- 

 dividual, and took them home. In picking them up, I was 

 much struck with their resemblance to the disarticulated 

 grains of a block of glacier-ice; or, rather, it struck me 

 that they were the only objects which I had seen, with which 

 I could compare the grains in respect of their outward form. 

 Just as the vertebrae of the chamois fit exactly to each other, 

 to form the vertebral column of the animal, so do the grains 

 of the glacier fit exactly into each other to form a compact 

 block. The vertebrae are united and held together by liga- 

 ments, the grains of the glacier are united by an aqueous 

 cement, which has a slightly lower melting temperature than 

 their own. 



When we walk on the glacier we crush under foot nothing 

 but the grains of the glacier, which have been loosened for 

 our benefit by the radiant energy of the sun. If the white 

 surface layer of the disintegrated ice be chipped away with 

 an ice-axe, so as to expose a smooth surface of blue ice, in 

 the course of a single summer's day this smooth blue surface 

 will become as white and crumbling as any other part of the 

 surface of the glacier. If it were not for this interaction 

 between the solar rays and the granular ice, traversing a 

 glacier in summer would be almost an impossibility. 



Snow "Nev^ and Glacier. In the lowlands, snow falls and 

 melts again, and we have no opportunity of witnessing the 

 metamorphoses which it may experience when lying for a 

 long time on the ground. It is otherwise with the snow 

 which falls in the high mountains. There the temperature 

 of the air is nearly always below the melting-point, and the 

 snow may remain for years without reaching that tempera- 

 ture. It is often assumed that the higher we climb amongst 

 the mountains, the greater is the quantity of snow which falls 

 in the year. But this is a mistake. In the Alps the greatest 



