THE WAXING AND WANING OF GLACIERS.

Timaru Herald, Volume XLI, Issue 3257, 5 March 1885, Page 3

THE WAXING AND WANING OF GLACIERS.

(Spectator.) We once heard a Zermatt guide express the opinion thai glaciers have a bedetitendc Natw of their own j that they wax and wane m some mysterious manner, independent of the seasons, and past finding out. M. J. Venetz, an engineer of Canton Vaud, was the first to point out, m a work published at Zurich m 1833, that glaciers are nearly always either waxing or waning ; and his conclusions have been confirmed by several subsequent observers, notably by Professor 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 glaciers have increased and diminished with periodic regularity. It is on record that, towards the end of the seventeenth century, the lower Grindelwald glacier invaded pastures and swept away trees m 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 m the fifteenth century, had become impracticable m the eighteenth. There exists, moreover, a map of the neighborhood of the Grimsel, drawn m 1740 by a doctor of Lucerne ; and when Agasaiz, m 1845, compared this map with the glaciers of the Aar, he found that they had advanced a full kilometre— that is to say, their lower extremities were that much further down the valley. Less than forty years ago the great Aletsch glacier, which of late has so wofully waned, was waxing m portentous fashion. It uprooted trees and threw down houses which had stood for generations. The times when glaciers gain ground live long m the memories of the mountaineers of the Alps. For tradition and history tell of waxing glaciers which push before them masßes of snow so vast as to overwhelm villages, destroy human lives and sweep away flocks and herds. People are still living m Switzerland who retain a vivid recollection of the terrible time, some sixty-five 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 goatherds starved to death m their huts. Another like period was that between ICOB and 1611. In canton Glarus alone hundreds of acres of forest and meadow-land were wasted by glacier and avalanche. In August, 1585 the sudden forward movement of a glacier destroyed a herd of cattle m the Val di Tuorz (Graubiinden), burying them so deeply that their bodies were never seen again. On December 27th, 1819, the village of Randa, m the Valais, was destroyed by a Gletcher-lawine (glacier avalanche). Almost every building the village contained was either overwhelmed and crushed or lifted bodily upward and thrown on one side. Millstones went spinning through theair like cannon balls ; balks of timber were shot into a wood a milb above the village ; the dead bodies of kine were found hundreds of yards from their pastures ; and the church spire was sent flying into a distant meadow, like an arrow from a bow. In ] 855 began that long retrograde movement which seems only now to be approaching its term; Twenty-five years ago the two great Chamounix glaciers appeared to be m a 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 produced a decided and not altogether desirable change m the aspect of many Alpine valleys. The beautiful little Rosonlaue glacier, which twenty years ago gleamed among the dark pinewoods and green pastures of the Reichenbach Valley, has utterly disappeared, 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 a mile away, and wanes year by year. The Swiss Alpine Club, among its other good works, causes to be built every summer m front of the glacier a little mound of stones painted black. These mark the glacier's backward progress, and show that from 1874 to 1883 it shrunk at the rate of from 25 to 70 metres a year. But the retrograde movement of the previous ten years was much greater, and we may even now be on the eve of a movement m advance. Venetz attributed the alternations which he was the first to make known, if not to discover, to variations m temperature ; and albeit the climate of Europe has not changed m historic times, and the world's rainfall is always the same, there are dry years and wet years, and it was thought that after a rainy winter glaciero waxed, and that after a droughty one they waned. But, as Professor Forel has lately shown, this theory does not accord with facts. The Grindelwald Pfarrbuch contains a record of the movements of the glacier for three centuries, and this record clearly proveß that glaciers advance and retreat over periods which are measured by decades. A glacier wanes or waxes continuously 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 1540 and 1575 the lower Grindelwald glacier receded ; from 1575 to 1602 it advanced ; from 1602 to 1620 it remained stationary ; 1703 marked a maximum of advance, 1720 a maximum of retreat ; the next twenty-three years was a period of growth, the following forty years of retrogression. From 1776 to 1778 the movement was reversed. In 1819 another period of progression set m, the some m 1840 ; and the present cycle of waning began m 1855.