REVIEWS. 



337 



compliment to readers in general, about other engagements, refers to a six- 

 weeks' examination of the Mer de Glace and its tributaries, assisted by Dr. 

 Hirst, with a view to the investigation of the motion of the glacier, and the 

 connection of the veined-structure of the glacier with the stratification of the 

 neve. But no scientific information on these points is given, and the whole 

 chapter, however nicely penned, is therefore reduced to little more than the mere 

 personal adventures of a man and a boy for a day among the seracs of the 

 Glacier du Geant, one of the few instructive passages being the description of 

 the ice-cascade through the defile formed by Le Rognon and the promontory of 

 the Aiguille Noire. 



The fourth chapter, by Mr. W. Matthew, contains several years' excursions 

 amongst the mountains of Bagnes, and abounds in notices of the movements 

 and aspects of the six great glaciers which pour their frozen streams into this 

 fine valley, plougliing up the green herbage of the meadows before them in 

 their slow but irresistible passage, or stranded there, insensibly melt away, 

 leaving great rubious heaps of rock or moraines as mementos in future ages of 

 their past existence. 



The description of the interrupted feast, in Mr. Hinchoif's excursion from 

 Zermatt to the Val d'Armiviers by the Trift Pass, is not only amusing, but 

 affords an excellent idea of the fall and scattering of great blocks of massive 

 rocks from the mountain's side, as also of the process by which the debris of 

 the moraines is originally accumulated. 



Mr. Ball's visit to Zermatt in 1843, in some degree fills up the noticeable 

 blank in Professor TyndalL's paper by some casual observations on Professor 

 Porbes' statements, and by some intelligibly recorded facts and suggestions 

 of his own. To these are added some new remarks upon the intensities of 

 moonlight and early dawn at great heights. 



One passage in Mr. Anderson's interesting descent from the Schreckhorn, so 

 forcibly conveys the constant and perpetual degradation of the granite rock- 

 masses of the higher peaks, that we tliink it quite worthy of quotation, as 

 showing how great in aggregate result must be the effects of the frosts and 

 other atmospheric influences which are uninterruptedly exerted at these great 

 mountain-heights. He tells us in the descent of his party they saw nothing 

 but bare rock. " There seemed no end to it. Once only I remember that the 

 scene was varied, when a change took place in the mineral character of the 

 rock, and we passed from the granite — too constantly disintegrated by the frost 

 to permit of vegetation forming upon it — to a formation which, by its compo- 

 sition or the direction of its cleavage, is more capable of resisting that mighty 

 leveller of the high places of the earth. There the cliffs were clothed with 

 Kchens of the most beautiful and varied colours, affording a charming relief to 

 the eye." 



The cause of such destructive inundations as those of 1852, in Switzerland 

 and Savoy, is simply and inteUigibly explained by Mr. BaU, in his expedition 

 from the Grimsel to Grindelwald. 



" I had," he says, " already been struck with the fact that on the Grimsel, 

 and even on the Siderhorn, we had on the previous day encountered rain 

 instead of snow, whereas on former visits, during bad weather, I had found 

 deep snow at the Grimsel in August. The thermometer, during the preceeding 

 thirty-six hours, had not fallen below 47 degrees Fahrenheit, showing that the 

 current from the south, whose over-charge of aqueous vapour had caused the 

 heavy rain of the last five days, had maintained a temperature unusually high, 

 even for the height of summer. This was the real cause of those destructive 

 inundations which made the month of September, 1852, long remembered in 

 many parts of Switzerland and Savoy. Such inundations would be far more 

 common if the enormous fall of rain in the lower valleys of the Alps were not 



