The Democratic advocate. [volume] (Westminster, Md.) 1865-1972, 1885-05-30
Mysterious Movements of Glaciers.

We once heard Zermatt guide express
the opinion that glaciers have 6edeaende
Ndtur of their own: that they wax and
wane in some mysterious manner, indepen-
dent of the seasons, and past finding out.
Nj. j. Venetz, an engineer of Canton
Vaud, 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 subsequent observers, notably by
! Professor Forel, of Morges, whose investi-
cations extend over 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 Grindelwald glacier in
vaded pastures and swept away trees in the
beautiful valley between the Jungfrau and
the Faulhorn. The glaciers of Mont
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
eighteenth. There exists, moreover, a map
of the neighborhood of Grimsel, drawn in
1740 by doctor of Lucerne; and when
Agassiz, in 1S45, compared this map with
the Glaciers of the Aar, he found that
they had advanced full kilometre-
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 years 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 mountaineers 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 focks and herds. People are still
living in Switzerland who retain vivid re-
collection of the terrible time, some Go
years ago, when the swelling glaciers thrust
before them such heaps of snow and rub
bish that meadows were devastated, woods
cut down, dwellings buried, and their in
mates smothered, and goat herds starved
to death in their huts Another like peri
cd was that between 1908 and 1911. In
Canton Glarus alone hundreds of acres of
forest and meadow land were wasted by
glacier and avalanche In August, 1885,
the sudden forward movement of glacier
destroyed herd of cattle in the Valdi
di Tuorz (Graubunder), burying them so
deeply that their bodies were never seen
again. On December 9th, 1919, the
village of Randa, in the Valals, was destroy
ed by Gletcher-lawine glacier avalanche).
Almost every building the village con-
tanned was either overwhelmed and crushed
or lifted bodily upward and thrown on one
side. Millstones went spinning through
the air like cannon balls; balks of timber
were shot into wood mile above the
village; the dead bodies of kline were
found hundreds of yards from their pas
lures and the church spire was sent flying
into distant meadow like an arrow from
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 fair way for reaching
the chalets that stand near the terminal
moraine, and then they stopped and have
gone back ever since. The shrinking,
though neither simultaneous nor equal, has
been general and remarkable, and produce
adecided and not altogether desirable
change in the aspect Of many Alpine val
leys The beautiful little Rosenlaue gla-
cier, which twenty years ago cleaned among
the dark woods and green pastures of the
Reichenbach Valley, has utterly disappear
ed, leaving behind it an unsightly moraine
of rocky fragments In 1857 the Rhone
glacier reached as far as the bridge near
the Gletch Hotel; now it is close upon
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 little mound of stone
painted black These mark the glaciers
backward progress, and show that from
1884 to 1888 it shrank at the rate of from
twenty-five to seventy metres year. But
the retrograde movement of the previous
ten years was much greater, and we may
even now be on the eve of movement in
advance Ventz attributed the alterations
which he was the first to make known, if
not to discover, to variations in tempera-
ture and albeit the climate of Europe has
not changed in historic times, and the
worlds rainfall is always the same, there
are dry years and wet years, and it was
thought that after rainy winter glaciers
waxed, and that after droughty one they
waned But, as Professor Forel has lately
shown, this theory does not accord with
facts. The Grindewalg Piarrbuch contains
a record of the movements of the glacier
for three centuries, and this record clearly
proves that glaciers advance and retreat
over periods which are measured by de-
cades. A glacier wanes or wakes continu-
ously for ten, fifteen or even forty years
for equally long periods it may remain
stationary, but it never goes forward one
year and back the next Thus between
1910 and 1875 the lower Grindewald gla-
cier receded from 1875 to 1902 it adj
vanced from 1902 to 1920 it remained
stationary; 1903 marked maximum of
retreat the next twenty three years was
period of growth, the following forty years
of retrogression. From 1776 to 1878 the
movement was reversed. In 1919 another
period of progression set in, the same in
1910, and the present cycle of wandering
began in 1855.-LondOn Inspector.
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