comes at least among the legends which we should like to believe. As told the present writer by a native of the district, it happened when, in the nighttime the mountain came down, the herdsmen and their cows gathered in the _chalets_--stout buildings which are prepared to resist avalanches of snow. In one of these, which was protected from crushing by the position of the stones which covered it, a solitary herdsman found himself alive in his unharmed dwelling. With him in the darkness were the cows, a store of food and water, and his provisions for the long summer season. With nothing but hope to animate him, he set to work burrowing upward among the rocks, storing the _debris_ in the room of the _chalet_. He toiled for some months, but finally emerged to the light of day, blanched by his long imprisonment in the darkness, but with the strength to bear him to his home. In place of the expected warm welcome, the unhappy man found himself received as a ghost. He was exorcised by the priest and driven away to the distance. It was only when long afterward his path of escape was discovered that his history became known. Returning to the account of the _debris_ which descends at varied speed into the torrents, we find that when the detritus encounters the action of these vigorous streams it is rapidly ground to pieces while it is pushed down the steep channels to the lower country. Where the stones are of such size that the stream can urge them on, they move rapidly; at least in times when the torrent is raging. They beat over each other and against the firm-set rocks; the more they wear, the smaller they become, and the more readily they are urged forward. Where the masses are too large to be stirred by the violent current, they lie unmoved until the pounding of the rolling stones reduces them to the proportions where they may join the great procession. Ordinarily those who visit mountains behold their torrents only in their shrunken state, when the waters stir no stones, and fail even to bear a charge of mud, all detachable materials having been swept away when the streams course with more vigour. In storm seasons the conditions are quite otherwise; then the swollen torrents, their waters filled with clay and sand, bear with them great quantities of boulders, the collisions of which are audible above the muffled roar of the waters, attesting the very great energy of the action.