TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION E., 623 
century was the culmination of the last great advance. The general estimate of 
their duration appears to be halfacentury. The ice is now retreating in the 
Alps, the Caucasus, and the Himalaya, and I believe in North America. We live 
in a retrogressive period. The minor oscillation of advance which a few years 
ago gave hopes to those who, like myself, had as children seen the glaciers of 
Grindelwald and Chamonix at their greatest, has not been carried on. 
Attempts are made to connect the oscillations of glaciers with periods of 
sunspots. They are, of course, connected with the rain or snow-fall in past 
seasons. But the difficulty of working out the connection is obvious. 
The advance of the ice will not begin until the snows falling in its upper basin 
have had time to descend as ice and become its snout ; in each glacier this period 
will vary according to its length, bulk, and steepness, and the longer the 
glacier is, the slower its lower extremity will be to respond. Deficiency in 
snowfall will take effect after the same period. It will be necessary, therefore, to 
ascertain (as has been done in a tragic manner on Mont Blane by the recovery 
in the lowest portion of the Glacier des Bossons of the bodies of those lost in its 
highest snows) the time each glacier takes to travel, and to apply this interval to 
the date of the year with which the statistics of deposition of moisture are to 
be compared. It the glacier shows anything about weather and climate, it is past 
not contemporary weather it indicates. 
Another point in which the Asiatic ranges, and particularly the Himalaya, 
differ from the Alps is in the frequency of snow avalanches, earthfalls, and mud- 
slides. These are caused by the greater deposition of snow and the more sudden 
and violent alternations of heat and cold, which lead to the splitting of the 
hanging ice and snows by the freezing of the water in their pores. I have noticed 
at a bivouac that the moment of greatest cold—about the rising of the morning 
star—is often hailed by the reports of a volley of avalanches. 
The botanist may find much to do in working out a comparison of the flora of 
my four ranges. I am no botanist: I value flowers according, not to their rarity, 
but to their abundance, from the artist’s, not the collector’s, point of view. But 
it is impossible not to take interest in such matters as the variations of the 
gentian in different regions, the behaviour of such a plant as the little Hdelweiss 
(once the token of the Tyrolese lover, now the badge of every Alp-trotter), which 
frequents the Alps, despises the Caucasus, reappears in masses in the Himalaya, 
and then, leaping all the isles of the tropics, turns up again under the snows of 
New Zealand. I may mention that it is a superstition that it grows only in 
dangerous places, I have often found it where cows can crop it; it covers acres 
in the Himalaya, and I believe it has been driven by cows off the Alpine pastures, 
as it is being driven by tourists out of the Alps altogether. 
The Italian botanists, MM. Levier and Sommier, have given a vivid 
account of what they call the Makroflora of the Central Caucasus—those wild- 
flower beds, in which a man and horse may literally be lost to sight, the product 
of sudden heat on a rich and sodden soil composed of the vegetable mould of ages. 
Has any competent hand celebrated the Mikroflora of the highest ridges, those 
tiny, vivid forget-me-nots and gentians and ranunculuses that flourish on 
rock-island ‘ Jardins’ like that of Mont Blanc, among the eternal snows, and 
enamel the highest rocks of the Basodano and the Lombard Alps? A compre- 
hensive work on a comparison of mountain flora and the distribution of Alpine 
plants throughout the ranges of the Old World would be welcome. We want 
another John Ball. Allied to botany is forestry, and the influence of trees on 
rainfall, and consequently the face of the mountains, a matter of great importance, 
which in this country has hardly had the attention it deserves. 
From these brief suggestions as to some of the physical features of mountains 
I would ask you to turn your attention to the points in which mankind come in 
contact with them, and first of all to History. 
I fancy that the general impression that they have served as efficient barriers 
is hardly in accordance with facts, at any rate from the military point of view. 
Hannibal, Cesar, Charles the Great, and Napoleon passed the Alps successfully, 
Hannibal, it is true, had some difficulty, but then he was handicapped with 
