A Glacier Hunt. 



8i 



tent or cabin of canvas was used instead. Mrs. 

 Agassiz in her life of her husband follows the history 

 of the bowlder. She states that it had begun to 

 split in 1 841, and in 1844 broke apart, the elements 

 completing its ruin in the following years. She adds 

 that as late as 1884, forty years later, a piece of the 

 stone was found bearing the names of some of the 

 party and the number 2. The piece had been car- 

 ried a long distance by the river of ice. 



Some of the experiments made this year were ex- 

 tremely interesting. One was to introduce coloured 

 fluid into the glacier and thus trace the network of 

 fissures which it was supposed carried water into 

 the heart of the glacier. To watch the fluid, a gallery 

 was cut through the body of the glacier thirty feet 

 below the surface. Other experiments showed the 

 rapidity of advancement and that the centre moved 

 more rapidly than the edges — a result proved by the 

 position of a row of stakes which had been driven 

 across the glacier the previous September, and now 

 found to form a crescent, the centre being far in ad- 

 vance of those on the sides. The rate of advance- 

 ment of the glacier day and night, the topographical 

 survey of the glacier, the surface waste, these and 

 others were the points observed. 



The letters of Agassiz written at this time show 

 what sacrifices were made to add to the knowledge 

 of glacial science. The results of these investiga- 

 tions, representing seasons of labour and adventure, 

 were summed up in a work completed in Paris and 

 published under the title of the Systhne Glaciaire, 

 which embodied, so to speak, the life history of a 



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