AUTHOR'S PREFACE. 



After an absence of twelve years, I visited the Mei 

 de Glace last Jane. It exhibited in a striking degree 

 that excess of consumption over supply, which, if contin- 

 ued, will eventually reduce the Swiss glaciers to the mere 

 spectres of their former selves. When I first saw the 

 Mer de Glace its ice-cliffs towered over Les Mottets, and 

 an arm of the Arveiron, issuing from the cliffs, plunged 

 as a powerful cascade down the rocks. The ice has now 

 shrunk far behind them. A huge moraine, left behind 

 by the retreating glacier, will mark, for some time to 

 come, its recent magnitude. The vault of the Arveiron 

 has dwindled considerably. The way up to the Chapeau 

 lies on the top of a lateral moraine, reached a few years ago 

 by the surface of the glacier, the present surface lying far 

 below. The visible and continual breaking away of the 

 moraines, left thus stranded on the mountain-flank, ex- 

 plains the absence of ancient ridges on the mountains 



