In the night of September 4, 1618, the falling of the Monte Conto, in the Vale of Chiavenna, so completely buried the small town of Plürs and the village of Scilano, that of their 2,430 inhabitants but three remained alive, and but one single house escaped the universal destruction. At present, magnificent chestnut-trees grow upon the mound of ruins and cast their shade over the graves of the long-forgotten victims. Three villages, with their whole population, were covered in the district of Treviso when the Piz mountain fell in 1772; and the enormous masses of rock which in 1248 detached themselves from Mount Grenier, south of Chambery in Savoy, buried five parishes, including the town and church of Saint André, the ruin occupying an extent of about nine square miles. Sometimes the same village has been repeatedly destroyed by mountain- slips. Thus excavations have shown that Brienz, a hamlet built on the borders of the lake of the same name, on a mound of accumulated ruins, has been twice overwhelmed by a deluge of stones and mud, and twice reconstructed. It would be useless to multiply examples of the undermining power of water. I will merely add that it is impossible to wander through the valleys of Switzerland without being struck by the sight of the sloping hillocks of rubbish piled up against the foot of every gigantic rock wall, which in many cases can only be attributed to that cause. Some are entirely overgrown with large firs, thus showing that the last stony avalanche took place at a remote period; others are desolate heaps of rubbish, which evidently prove that the work of destruction is constantly going on, and that the highest peaks will ultimately be levelled with the plain. Over many a hamlet the sword of Damocles is continually suspended in the shape of a precipitous rock-wall, or of a forest-crowned mountain-brow. For years the undermining waters are slowly and secretly at work, and then suddenly the crisis takes place. [Illustration: AXMOUTH LANDSLIP.] Were the history of the Andes or of the Himalayas as familiar to us as that of the Alps, we should be able to relate many like instances of disastrous mountain-slips. But the high places of the earth do not alone bear witness to the power of aqueous erosion, for wherever the soil is undermined, it may be precipitated to a lower level. Thus, the phenomenon is by no means uncommon in England, though rarely occurring on so large a scale as in the landslip which took place at Axmouth in Dorsetshire, on December 24, 1839.