So much for guideless climbing. Let us now consider some of the other important developments in the practice of mountaineering. In the Alps the tendency has been towards specialisation. Before 1865 the ambitious mountaineer had scores of unconquered peaks to attack. After the defeat of the Matterhorn, the number of the unclimbed greater mountains gradually thinned out. The Meije, which fell in 1877, was one of the last great Alpine peaks to remain unclimbed. With the development of rock-climbing, even the last and apparently most hopelessly inaccessible rock pinnacles of the Dolomites and Chamounix were defeated. There is no rock-climbing as understood in Wales or Lakeland or Skye on giants of the Oberland or Valais, such as the Schreckhorn or Matterhorn. These tax the leader’s power of choosing a route, his endurance and his knowledge of snow and ice, and weather; but their demands on the pure cragsman are less. The difficulty of a big mountain often depends very much on its condition and length. Up to 1865 hardly any expeditions had been carried through--with a few exceptions, such as the Brenva route up Mont Blanc--that a modern expert would consider exceptionally severe. Modern rock-climbing begins in the late ’seventies. The expeditions in the Dolomites by men like Zsigmondy, Schmitt, and Winkler, among foreign mountaineers, belong to much the same period as Burgener and Mummery classic climbs in the Chamounix district. Mummery is, perhaps, best known in connection with the first ascent of the Grepon by the sensational “Mummery crack,” when his leader was the famous Alexander Burgener aided by a young cragsman, B. Venetz. Venetz, as a matter of fact, led up the “Mummery” crack. Mummery’s vigorous book, which has become a classic, contains accounts of many new expeditions, such as the Grepon, the Requin, the Matterhorn by the Zmutt arête, and the Caucasian giant Dych Tau, to name the more important. His book, _My Climbs in the Alps and Caucasus_, is thoroughly typical of the modern view of mountaineering. It contains some doctrines that are still considered heretical, such as the safety of a party of two on a snow-covered glacier, and many doctrines that are now accepted, such as the justification of guideless climbing and of difficult variation routes. Shortly after the book appeared, Mummery was killed on Nanga Parbat, as was Emil Zsigmondy on the Meije soon after the issue of his book on the dangers of the Alps.