Revieios — Bali's Alpine Guides. 369 



II. — Ball's Alpinb Guides. New Editions, 1873. In seven paets, 

 NAMELY : — The Bernese Alps, including the Oberland ; South- 

 Western Alps, including Dauphine and Piedmont, from Nice 

 to the Little St. Bernard ; North Switzerland, including the 

 Eighi, Zurich, and Lucerne ; the St. Gothard Pass and the 

 Italian Lakes ; East Switzerland, including the Engadine 

 and Lombard Valleys ; North Tyrol, and Bavarian, and 

 Salzburg Alps ; the Styrian, Carnio, and Julian Alps. 

 (London : Longmans, Green & Co.) 



THESE handy little knapsack companions are prepared expressly 

 for the convenience of tourists by Mr. John Ball, F.E.S., late 

 President of the Alpine Club, a gentleman eminently qualified to 

 direct our steps among the peaks, passes, and glaciers of the Alps, 

 with every foot of which he is so familiar. 



Each of these compact little half-crown parts is complete in itself, 

 containing a separate district divided into sections, and these again 

 into routes ; each furnished with its key-map and maps of sections 

 or districts. 



Three more will be ready (so the publishers assure us) immediately, 

 namely : — Mont Blanc and Monte Eosa ; Central Tyrol, including the 

 Gross Glockner ; South Tyrol, and Venetian or Dolomite Alps; thus 

 completing the set of Guides in ten separate parts. 



Panting for freedom and an alpenstock, with August upon us, and 

 the temperature not far short of 100° in many a London studio, what 

 more refreshing and acceptable sight than these charming little 

 green-covered octavo volumes, telling of rivers of ice miles in length, 

 sufficient to satisfy all London with iced drinks for the rest of the 

 year ; of glacial moraines, roches moutonnees and blocs perches : 

 let us away, with Mr. Ball for our guide, to geologise, botanise, to 

 sketch or to loaf, and lay in a store of health, strength, and pure 

 enjoyment, over the Bernese Oberland, by the sunny Italian lakes, 

 or amidst the Styrian Alps and the Dolomite Mountains. 



Let us take our stand, in imagination, for a few minutes upon the 

 central group of the Bernese Alps. " The most remarkable charac- 

 teristic in the orography of this group is that whereas the W. portion 

 of that chain consists of a single series of summits, with compara- 

 tively short projecting buttresses, the higher group presents a series 

 of longitudinal ridges parallel to the axis of the main chain, and 

 separated from each other by deep valleys that form the channels of 

 great glaciers. Thus the Tschingel glacier and the Gasterenthal 

 separate the portion of the main range lying between the Gemmi 

 and the Mittaghorn from the equally high parallel range of the 

 Doldenhorn and Blumlis Alp on its N. side. To the S. the same 

 portion of the main range is divided from the still higher parallel 

 range whose summits are the Aletschhorn and the Bietschhorn by the 

 Lotsclienthal and Lotschen Glacier. To this again succeeds the deep 

 trench through which the lower part of the Aletsch Glacier flows 

 down to the Ehone, inclosed by the minor ridge that culminates in 

 the Aeggischhorn. 



VOL. X. — NO. ex. 24 



