SUITE DB l'^TDDB, BY CJBZANNE. 103 



are inapplicable as means of extinction, as is the case with many which 

 derive their floods from glaciers, — and which treat of the absolute and the 

 relative advantages of dykes or embankments, of harrages or wears, and of 

 artificial channels for drawing off the excess of waters, — ^while the last of 

 them supplies not a little detailed information in regard to Swiss torrents 

 similar to what has been cited in regard to torrents in the French Alps. 



And in a concluding chapter the information obtained by induction 

 through the study of the torrents of the Alps is applied to geological pheno- 

 mena which find, or do not find, a satisfactory explanation in deductions 

 made from what has there been seen. 



In this chapter he shews that extensive districts of the country, some of 

 them far away from the Alps, show indications of torrential and glacier 

 action, upon which, when this has once been seen, it is as impossible to look 

 without this being seen, as it is to look upon the remains of extinct torrents 

 in the Alps, referred to by M. Surell, without perceiving them to be such, 

 when once they have been seen to be so in the light of M. Surell's observations. 



The expansion of the theory is so very great that some preparation of 

 mind may be desirable before taking up his views, and the more advanced 

 views of others upon the subject, whether this be done with a view to 

 accepting, or comparing and weighing, or rejecting them. This may be 

 pleasantly obtained by a cursory perusal of the following little fancy sketch, 

 embodied in a defence which he makes of graphic details of physical 

 geography, embodied in the memoir by M. Breton, analyzed in his work. 



" M. Breton," says he, " almost apologizes for pausing to describe effects 

 so well-known in the mountains. But, apart from the circumstances that the 

 delightful character of his demonstrations secures for him the favourable 

 consideration of his readers, do not many pass by the most interesting 

 phenomena of nature without observing them ] And is it not delightful 

 for a traveller when, enlightened by the instructions of a master, he knows 

 how to account to himself for all the peculiarities of those distracted 

 surfaces, and to decypher at a glance in these archives of stone the ancient 

 history of the mountain 1 



" This steep declivity is a cone of crumbled down earth which descends 

 from that gap ; this one here, less inclined, has been produced by an aval- 

 anche ; that other presents the subdued slopes of a torrential cone. This 

 small hill leaning its back on the mountain is an ancient cone which would 

 fill up the valley ; near to the gorge a village conceals itself, the vane of 

 the clock peers out from above massive domes of walnut trees, towards the 

 base the river has lately opened a troncature or section of the cone by a 

 rush upon it, and then she has thrown itself against the other side of the 

 valley ; a recent cone has engrafted herself on the older, a little in advance 

 of the exposed I section ; not far from that a moraine, more ancient still, 

 almost buried in the cone, carries back the thoughts to the times long past, 

 when these fields, to-day so rich and animated, were like to the desolate 

 fiords of Greenland, and slept enshrouded in a mantle of ice." 



AU this seems natural and sound ; we feel that it is not a mantle of fiction, 

 but a mantle of fact which is being thrown over the scene, and we find pleasure 

 in the reproduction of what was in the olden time, and in time much older 

 than that to which that designation is generally given. But he (C6zanne) 

 takes us over extensive districts of France, and shows us the same kind of 

 things every where. Nor does he in doing so recede into the inaccessible, 

 where we cannot test the correctness and verisimilitude of what he Says. 



