spikes, about one third of an inch long, and screwed deeply into thick soles. It was intimated that easier play might be given to the foot, if the shoes were covered with two soles; the first extending the whole length, the second not covering the hollow of the foot. He also provided himself with a wide brimmed straw-hat, as a shelter from the rays of the sun; two veils, one black and the other green; and a plaster of Burgundy-pitch to be placed upon the chest and between the shoulders, to defend the lungs : provisions in sacks for three days, consisting of wine, spirits, vinegar, several kinds of meat, and other necessaries; ropes of ten or twelve feet long, for the purpose of tying the adventurers together, when they were to pass over hazardous ground; a baton or pole for each about six feet long, armed at the end with an iron-spike; and an axe to cut steps in the ice or

snow.

He started on the night of the 18th August, at half-past ten o'clock with six guides: there being no moon, they took a lantern. They reached the Aiguilles du Midi at half-past three in the morning, where they rested at four they departed, and put on their spiked-shoes and crampons. They next arrived upon " a long plain of ice, intersected with crevasses, which ran in parallel directions, and at right angles with the straight line of ascent. These chasms were seldom more than ten feet wide; but varied considerably in their depths, which are generally proportioned to those of the ice; the depths of the ice varying as the irregularity of the surface over which it runs. The

crevasses are supposed to be, in some places, several hundred feet deep; and their sides generally assumed the light blue tints of the sky."

"Fronting rose the summit of Mont Blanc, more than 7000 feet above the height upon which they stood; while on their left, a range of numerous Aiguilles soared above them more than 4000 feet, stretching eastward from below the summit, with outlines mellowed into aerial softness. Sometimes they presented fissured declivities, clothed with glittering mantles of ice; and sometimes clusters of sun-gilt spires, pinnacled on roofs sparkling with snow. On their right, and of about the same height with the Aiguilles, rose the white Dôme du Gouti, which derives its name from its form, and is joined to the western shoulder of the summit by a rising narrow ridge. Nearly in the midst of the snowy vale, between the Dôme and the Aiguilles, was seen a line of rocks, called the Grands Mûlets; the nearest and highest of which is elevated about 300 feet above its surrounding glaciers. This vale rose at an angle of 30 deg., and was crossed by three successive plateaus, elevated one above the other, at right angles with our line of ascent: the highest, which is also the largest, is called the grand plateau; from which abruptly rises the summit of Mont Blanc, to an elevation of about 3000 feet, appearing at a distance inaccessible."

Mr. Clissold shortly afterwards "came to a perfect column or tower of smooth blue shining ice, pierced, as it were, with elegant lancet windows, supporting an overhanging

overhanging roof, and almost leaning over its centre of gravity. It was about five-and-thirty feet high, and four in diameter: it had all the appearance of being artificial."-Next, he "caught a glance of an icy forest of miniature pinnacles and spires, still freezing in the morning air. However elegantly these fairy structures may be formed, they successively dissolve in the warmer atmosphere; and being hardened again by the nightly frosts, are perpetually starting into new objects of wonder."

"As they approached the line of congelation, they passed through labyrinths of most irregular masses. Their path was seldom seen more than a few yards before them, and sometimes appeared to be suddenly lost, leaving them locked up as it were in chambers of ice and congealed snow. One or two of the guides, mounting the most elevated pinnacles, explored the direction of their road, while the rest of the party awaited their call. The most perilous office of the guides is to make these surveys."

"At seven they reached the usual resting-place, and at nine they put on their veils and set out to enter the regions of eternal snow. The thermometer in the sun was then 70. As the day advanced they heard many avalanches falling from the rocks: the heat was oppressive; and they were much harassed with thirst. They found great relief from wine or vinegar mixed with the thawed snow. The thermometer in the sun was still at 70; the snow was so hard that steps were cut in it with the axe for many hundred

yards. After some hundred feet of ascent, they were opposed by a parapet of congealed snow, about eight feet high, and of the hardness of ice. This they scaled by means of steps cut as before, and in the vicinity found a dead bee.”

"It was nearly six o'clock before they came in view of the Roche Rouge, a rock on the eastern side of Mont Blanc, and 800 ft. below its summit; they therefore deferred ascending until the morning. At eight o'clock the thermometer was at 26 deg.; during the night it had fallen to about 18 deg. They reached the summit the next morning at half-past five o'clock. The thermometer soon rose again to 70 deg. The sum-mit presented a much larger area than the principal guide had ever seen, although it was his sixth ascent. It is supposed, therefore, that a portion of the previous altitude of the mountain had fallen. The plain of the summit was triangular, and almost equilateral; declining from its north side, which was nearly horizontal, parallel to, and facing the valley of Chamouni; the distance from the middle of this side to the opposite angle being not less than 5 or 600 feet. The plain declined from the horizon about 200 feet, and was intersected by a fissure, which ran parallel and near to the side next Chamouni, presenting in appear

ance the form of a crevasse."

Mr. Clissold observes of the sublimity of the prospect: "The air was perfectly still; the sky of a deep cerulean tint; and the contrast of this richness and solemnity of shade magnificently increased the splendour of the sun. A thin hazy circle skirted the horizon,

dimming

indications afforded by geology of such a convulsion, I entirely coincide with the views of M. Čuvier, in considering them as bearing undeniable evidence of a recent and transient inundation. On these grounds I have felt myself fully justified in applying the epithet diluvial, to the results of this great convulsion; of antediluvial, to the state of things immediately preceding it; and post diluvial, or alluvial, to that which succeeded it, and has continued to the present time."

As throwing a light upon this remote question, the cave of Kirkdale offers some curious data. The remains found imbedded in the instance alluded to, were preserved from decomposition by strata of loam and stalagmite, which effectually protected them from the action of the atmospheric air; and their different stages of decay were obviously owing to their possessing more or less of this protection. Teeth and bones of twenty-three species of animals, including elephant, rhinoceros, hippopotamus, horse, tiger, bear, ox, deer, &c. have been ascertained; and the hypothesis respecting them is, that they belonged to various creatures devoured by hyænas, of which this cave was the abode for generations; and it is calculated from their reliquiæ, to the number of at least from 200 to 300 had been its inhabitants previous to the deluge. Mr. B. demonstrates that the habits of these hyænas were similar to those of the hyæna of the present day, though they are supposed to have been onethird larger than the largest species which now exists, namely, the striped hyæna of Abyssinia.

Thus the phenomena of this

cave seem referable to a period immediately antecedent to the last inundation of the earth, and in which the world was inhabited by land animals, almost all bearing a generic, and many a specific resemblance to those which now exist: but so completely has the violence of that tremendous convulsion destroyed and remodelled the form of the antediluvian surface, that it is only in caverns that have been protected from its ravages that we may hope to find undisturbed evidence of events in the period immediately preceding it.

The bones already

described, and the stalagmite formed before the introduction of the diluvial mud, are what I consider to be the products of the period in question. It was indeed probable, before the discovery of this cave, from the abundance in which the remains of similar species occur in superficial gravel beds, which cannot be referred to any other than a diluvial origin, that such animals were the antediluvian inhabitants not only of this country but generally of all those northern latitudes in which their remains are found, (but the proof was imperfect, as it was possible they might have been drifted or floated hither by the waters from the warmer regions of the earth;) but the facts developed in this charnel-house of the antediluvian forests of Yorkshire demonstrate that there was a long succession of years in which the elephant, rhinoceros, and hippopotamus, had been the prey of the hyenas, which, like themselves, inhabited England in the period immediately preceding the formation of the diluvial gravel; and if they inhabited this country,

it follows as a corollary, that they also inhabited all those other regions of the northern hemisphere, in which similar bones have been found under precisely the same circumstances, not mineralized, but simply in the state of grave bones imbedded in loam, or clay, or gravel, over great part of northern Europe, as well as North America and Siberia. The catastrophe producing this gravel appears to have been the last event that has operated generally to modify the surface of the earth; and the few local and partial changes that have succeeded it, such as the formation of deltas, terraces, tufa, torrent-gravel and peat-bogs, all conspire to show, that the period of their commencement was subsequent to that at which the diluvium was formed."

"It is not to my present pur pose to discuss the difficulties that will occur on both sides, till the further progress of geological science shall have afforded us more ample information as to the structure of our globe, and have supplied those data, without which all opinions that can be advanced on the subject must be premature, and amount to no more than plausible conjecture. At present I am concerned only to establish two important facts,-1st, That there has been a recent and general inundation of the globe; and, 2d, That the animals whose remains are found interred in the wreck of that inundation were natives of high north latitudes, and not drifted to their present place from equatorial regions by the waters that caused their destruction. One thing, however, is nearly certain, viz. that if any

change of climate has taken place, it took place suddenly; for how otherwise could the elephant's carcase, found entire in ice at the mouth of the Lena, have been preserved from putrefaction till it was frozen up with the waters of the then existing ocean? Nor is it less probable that this supposed change was contemporaneous with, and produced by, the same cause which brought on the inundation. What this cause was, whether a change in the inclination in the earth's axis, or the near approach of a comet, or any other cause or combination of causes purely astronomical, is a question the discussion of which is foreign to the object of the present memoir.

"In a geological point of view, the occurrence of these bones, under the circumstances above described, is important, as illustrating the manner in which the bones of antediluvian animals may have been accumulated by falling into similar fissures, which are now filled up with diluvial mud and pebbles; for if fissures existed (as they undoubtedly did) on the antediluvian face of the earth in much greater abundance than since that grand aqueous revolution, which has entirely filled up so many of them with its detritus, there is no reason why the then existing animals should not have fallen into them and perished, as modern animals do in the comparatively few cavities that remain still open in our limestone districts: and when we consider that it is the habit of graminivorous animals to be constantly traversing the surface of the ground in every direction in pursuit of food, it is obvious that they are subject in a greater degree than those which

are