286 In and Around the Morteratsch Glacier : 



ground which is shown to have been covered by it in the 

 album. Now the lower glacier has disappeared entirely, and 

 the ice-fall is diminishing also. The word wastage hardly 

 expresses the meaning ; we are here face to face with devasta- 

 tion, and nearly the whole of it has taken place in no more 

 than fifty years. 



At the date of my visit to Grindelwald (1867) there was 

 no idea of a period of continuous diminution of the glaciers 

 being before us, nor did one fully realise it until many years 

 later. There does not appear to be any record in historical 

 times of a retreat of the Swiss glaciers such as we can witness 

 at the present date. 



It is very important to keep this fact in view when we 

 read the works of the veterans of the first three-fourths of 

 last century and when we compare them with those to be 

 found in modern literature. The old men, like Hugi, Agassiz, 

 Forbes and even Tyndall, knew nothing of decaying glaciers. 



Oscillations, no doubt, there were, but all these glaciers, 

 in the main, held their own. Taking one year with another, 

 the wastage of the summer was made good in the course of 

 the year. These were the glaciers which they describe in 

 their works, and if we compare them with equally faithful 

 descriptions of glaciers in recent years, it is difficult to 

 recognise that they refer to the same thing. If, as has been 

 said above, the old men never saw a decaying glacier, it may 

 be said with equal truth that none of the present generation 

 of observers has ever seen a robust one. 



M. Vallot. who has charge of the observatories of Mont 

 Blanc, pointed out a few years ago that the sinking of the 

 glaciers in the Chamonix district amounted then to fully 

 one-eighth of the total amount of sinking since the last 

 ice age. 



But the recent shrinkage of the glaciers has taken place 

 in fifty years ; therefore, at the same rate the whole shrinkage 

 from the extension of the glaciers in tJie ice age to their present 

 state may have taken place in four hundred years. 



M. Vallot 1 has also shown that assuming the glaciers of 



1 Annales de r Observatoire du Mont Blanc, iv. 123. 



