at a point below the junction of the Finsteraarhorn and Lauter-Aar glaciers, at four hundred and sixty metres, or about fifteen hundred and ten feet. In viewing these glaciers no one, however sceptical, however unimaginative, can doubt the honesty of the great fiery Swiss naturalist’s belief in the historical reality of a glacial epoch, that this part of Switzerland is the natural result of the terrific orgy and dynamic force of profound glaciation, and that “Yon towers of ice Since the creation’s dawn have known no thaw.” The upper part of the glacier is known as the _Névé_ or _Firn_, and it is the lower part alone which is designated among the Swiss as the glacier. The névés are those fields of dazzling snow which extend above the zone of the glaciers, and their incessant transformation produces the glaciers. This snow of the névés does not resemble that lower down; it is harder, colder, and has the appearance of needles of pounded ice or little crystallized stars, and the alternations from frost to thaw give to this snow the brilliance of metal and a consistency approaching that of ice. The name _Moraine_ is given to those piles of stones, pebbles, blocks of rock, _débris_ of all sorts that the glacier brings down with it in its course, and which it gets rid of as soon as possible. “The glacier is always cleansing itself,” and if it expands, it breaks up and disperses its moraine; it pushes it, throwing out and piling on the sides even the largest blocks of stone. If, on the contrary, it contracts, part of this chaos of _débris_, left in its place, becomes covered by degrees with a carpet of turf. When two glaciers descend by opposite valleys, abutting on the same bed, and meet, their moraines mingle with one another, and are sometimes piled up till they attain a width of almost a thousand feet and a height of about seventy. The _Moulins_ form conduits for the surface-water, to carry it to the under-ground streams flowing beneath the glacier. Enormous masses of snow accumulate in some angle or on some ledge of the mountains until they either fall by their own weight or are broken off by oscillations of the air, or the warm ground thaws the lower stratum, and then the mass begins to slide, gaining in bulk and speed in its course. This is the terrible _avalanche_, and dwellings and even entire villages are buried from thirty to fifty feet deep. It sometimes descends with a force which causes it to rebound up the side of the opposite mountain. The avalanche produces a prodigious roar, not a reverberation of sound, but a prolongation of sound more metallic and musical than thunder, and may be heard at a great distance. An avalanche may be set in motion by a very trifling disturbance of the air: the flight of a bird, the cracking of a whip, the conversation of persons going along, sometimes suffices to shake and loosen it from the vertical face of the cliffs to which it is clinging: