360 



SCIENCE, 



LYol. IV., No. 88. 



THE HOTEL DES NEUCHATELOIS, AND 

 WHAT BECAME OF IT. 



At a recent fete of the Swiss Alpine club, a de- 

 spatch was received from Mr. Forel in regard to the 

 names which he has found on the Aar glacier. Mr. 

 Forel gave to the Gazette de Lausanne the following 

 information on the subject. He recalled the scien- 

 tific zeal of Agassiz and his friends in Neuchatel, 

 and their studies, extending from 1840 to 1846, of the 

 glacier near Grimsel. These enthusiastic naturalists 

 stationed themselves at the very centre of the glacier 

 at the junction of its sources, — the Lauteraar and 

 the Finsteraar, at the foot of the rocky promontory 

 known as the Abschwung. They found on the mid- 

 dle moraine a block of micaceous schist, supported 

 by other rocks, and forming a natural shelter, which 



(engineer at Neuchatel), 1845; Ch. Martins (professor 

 at Montpellier) ; " and several illegible letters. This 

 block also bears the inscription 'No. 2;' for in 1842, 

 Agassiz had a number of remarkable rocks marked 

 with numbers, the arrangement of which he intrusted 

 to his friend Wild, the geodesist of the expedition. 

 The block of the Hotel was marked as No. 2. The 

 third block is fifty-five metres lower, and bears the 

 inscriptions, ' Solioz Auguste 1842,' ' Lieutenant 

 Guntren,' and several words which Mr. Forel did not 

 understand. Mr. Forel calls attention to the fact 

 that the course traversed by the blocks since the 

 determination of their position by Agassiz has been 

 about fifty- five metres a year. 



We add an illustration of the rock as it appeared 

 in 1840-42, reduced from a plate in Dollfus's Mate- 

 riaux pour V etude des glaciers. 



they completed by other dry walls of rocks. They 

 thus possessed a rustic cabin, which they named the 

 Hotel des Neuchatelois; and there they lived three 

 seasons, illustrious in the annals of science. From 

 1840 to 1843 the Hotel was the rendezvous of all 

 interested in the theory of glaciers. But unfortu- 

 nately the block began to break up. As early as 1841 

 there were numerous fissures; and in 1844 it was 

 broken into two pieces; since then, the frost has 

 divided it into a thousand pieces. It is this debris, 

 still of considerable size, which Mr. Forel has found. 

 The highest block still bears inscriptions in red lead, 

 unfortunately most of them illegible. He could only 

 decipher the date ' 1842,' written three times, and 

 the name 'Vogt' (at present professor at Geneva). 

 Twenty-five metres lower, toward the valley, is the 

 stone discovered by Mr. Ritter of Leipzig, which bears 

 the inscription in large capitals, still easily read, 

 "Stengell (engineer, pupil of Osterwald), 1844; Otz 



THE INHABITANTS OF THE PUNJAB. 



Outlines of Punjab ethnography : being extracts from 

 the Punjab census of 1881, treating of religion, 

 language, and caste. By Denzil Charles Jelf 

 Ibbetson, of her Majesty's Bengal civil service. 

 Calcutta, Government, 1883. 4°. 



This is an imperial quarto of about 375 

 pages, made up of portions of the census re- 

 port, as indicated in the title, using no less than 

 eight enumerations of pages in combining the 

 stereotype plates selected. There is a good 

 table of contents, but no general index. 



The Punjab has irregular boundaries ; but 

 it may be roughly indicated as that part of 

 Hindostan north of the parallel of Delhi 

 (near 28° latitude, and 78° longitude), and 

 west of a line drawn north-west from that city, 



