OLD HAT TURNS UP

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 56, Issue 74, 9 January 1936, Page 8

OLD HAT TURNS UP

LOST 200 YEARS AGO. About 200 years ago somebody climbing the French Alps lost his felt hat, and it can only be hoped he did not lose his life as well, states an English journal. We know about the hat because a glacier has brought it. to view alter all these years, and from French paintings we know that it was the fashion two centuries ago. Tt is by no means the only thing the slow-moving glaciers have disclosed. Various objects belonging to a Pyreness guide who disappeared into a crevice of the Maladetta just over a century ago appeared recently a mile from where he fell, and they have been photographed. Some people may have come upon a coloured pyramid and wondered if this, too, was something brought down from the past by these rivers of ice, hut such pyramids are placed on the bands of the glaciers by men who measure their volume by means of what is called the tachometer. One glacier may move 20ft in a year, another 300 ft, it all depends on the formation of their rocky bed and the slope and mass of the ice. The pressure of a vast mass of ice makes a great difference to the speed of a glacier.