St. Landry democrat., 1884-12-20
GLAClEES.


bedeutende Natur of their own; that
they wax and wane in some mysterious
manner, independent of the seasons, and
past finding out M. j. Nenetz, an en-
gineer of Canton Wand, was the first to
point out, in work published in Zurich
in 1888, that glaciers are always either
waxing or waning; and his conclusions
have been confirmed by several subse-
quent observers, notably by Prof. Forel,
of Morges, whose Investigations extend
over a considerable period The exact
observation of glacial phenomena, like
science itself, is quite modern; but we
have abundant evidence that for ages
past glaciers have increased and
diminished with periodic regularity. 1t
is on record that toward the end OF the
seventeenth century the lower Grlndel-
valid glacier invaded pastures and swept
away trees in the beautiful valley be-
tween the Jungfrau and the Faulhorn.
The glaciers of Mount Blanc and Monte
Rosa were also, during the same period,
pushing forward; for several peaks
easily crossed in the fifteenth century
had become impracticable in the eight
eenth. There exists, moreover, a map
of the neighborhood of the Grimsel,
drawn in 1740 by a doctor of Lucerne,
and when Agassiz, in 1916, compared
this map with the glaciers OF the
Aar, he found that they had adj
vanced a full kilometer-that is to
say, their lower extremities were that
much farther down the valley. Less than
forty years ago the great Aletsch glacier,
which Of late has so wofully Waned,
was waxing in portentous fashion. 1t
uprooted trees and threw down houses
which had stood for generations. The
times when glaciers gain ground live
LONG in the memories OF the mountain
GERS of the Alps; for tradition and
history tell of waxing glaciers which
push before them masses of snow so
vast as to overWhelm villages, destroy
human lives, and sweep away flocks and
herds People are still living in Swift
zerland who retain a vivid recollection OF
the terrible time, some siXty-tiye years
ago, when the swelling glaciers thrust
before them such heaps of snow and
rubbish that meadows were devastated,
woods cut down, dwellings buried, and
their inmates smothered, and goat
herds starved to death in their huts.
Another like period was that between
1908 and 1911. In Canton Grarus alone
hundreds of acres of forest and meadow
land were wasted by glaciers and ava
lanche. In August, 1885, the sudden
forward movement of a glacier de-
stroyed herd of cattle in the Val di
Tuorz (Graubundenl, burying them so
deeply that their bodies were never seen
again On December q, 1919, the vii
lage of Randa, in the Valais, was de-
stroyed by a Gletcher-laWine GLACIER
avalanche). Almost every building the
village contained was either over
whelmed and crushed or lifted bodily
upward and thrown on one side. Mill
stones went spinning through the air like
cannon balls; balks of timber were shot
into wood mile above the village;
| the dead bodies of nine were found hum
dreds of yards from their pastures; and
the church spire was sent flying into a
distant meadow, like an arrow from a
bow. In 1855 began that long retro
grade movement which seems only now
to be approaching its term. Twenty
five years ago the two great Chamounix
glaciers appeared to be in a fair way
for reaching the chalets that stand near
the terminal moraine; and then they
stopped and have gone back ever since,
The shrinkage, though neither stimuli
taneous nor equal, has been general and
remarkable, and produces a decided and
not altogether desirable change to the
aspect Of many Alpine valleys. The
beautiful little Rosenlaue glacier, which
twenty years ago cleaned among the
dark pine woods and green pastures of
! the Reichenbach valley, has utterly dis
appeared, leaving behind it an insight
| ly moraine ofrocky fragments. In 1857
the Rhone glacier reached as far as the
bridge near the Gletch Hotel; now it is
| close upon a mile away, and wanes year
by year. The Swiss Alpine Club, among
its other good works, causes to be built
every summer in front of the glacier q
| little mound of stones painted black.
| These mark the glaciers backward
progress, and show that from 1884 to
1883 it shrank OF the rate of from
twenty to seventy meters a year. But
retrograde movement of the previous
ten years was much greater, and we
may even now be on the eve of a move
ment in advance. Veneh attributed the
alterations which he was the first tC
make known, if not to discover, to va
/ riations in temperature; and albeit the
climate of Europe has not changed II
| historic times, and the worlds rainfall
is always the same, here are dry years
and wet years, and it was thought that
after rainy winter glaciers waved, and
that after a droughty one they waned
But, as Prof. Forel has lately shown
this theory does not accord with facts