[Book Reviews]

Abstract

IN this ample pamphlet the author gives an account of the well-known glacier of the Aletsch and the neighbouring mountain region, in the course of which it is incidentally mentioned that the glaciers are again showing signs of increase after a period of general retreat which began in 1854. This statement, I think, requires some qualification, for the Gorner glacier certainly was advancing about the year 1859. The most marked diminution occurred in the next decade, and it did not commence till, at any rate, after 1861. The author describes the curious Märjelen See, which has already been noticed in these pages (vol. xxxvi. p. 612), giving some statistics as to its area, depth, &c. He quotes also a list of the occasions, so far as known, since 1813, on which its waters have escaped beneath the Aletsch glacier. In this, however, there is either an omission or a misprint. It states that in 1859 le lac se vide. This may be true, though it seems improbable, for the lake was also drained in 1858. In the latter part of August in that year I saw it for the first time. It was then full. The next evening I again visited the lake. The water had almost all vanished, and the great blocks of ice were stranded on the muddy floor. In reference to this floor the author makes a statement which I fail to understand:“ Le bassin du lac est une ancienne moraine de fond d'une des branches du glacier de I'Aletsch. Unless this mud be claimed as moraine profonde—and this I should dispute—the assertion seems to me without any valid foundation. The lake lies in the upper part of a small valley, worn by the passage of ice into a shape something like the pointed half of the bowl of a spoon. Another statement appears to me of questionable accuracy. The author notices the earth pillars on the southern slopes of the Eggishorn, describing them correctly, but saying of them, “Les pyramides des fées, aussi appelées ‘blocs perches.’” Surely this is an unwonted extension of the latter term.

Le Glacier de l'Aletsch et le Lac de Märjelen.

By Prince Roland Bonaparte. (Paris: Printed for the Author, 1889.)