Changes in the rhone glacier 1

Abstract

WE are indebted to Swiss naturalists for initiating a careful study of glaciers, and this has been o extended, as we learn from the Zeitschrift für Gletscherkun. to many of the most important regions on the earth's surface. In the majority of these their history, prior to the last few years, is a blank. That their glaciers have advanced and retreated is obvious, but when and at what rate is unknown. In the Alps, however, traditions exist which preserve a fairly trustworthy account of the more notable movements for at least two centuries, and the volume now issued by the Swiss Natural History Society, to which M. P. L. Mercanton is the principal contributor, gives, with some mention of these, the results of careful observations of the Rhone Glacier since 1874.