Part 24 (1/2)
(14.)
[Sidenote: RENDU'S CHARACTER.]
M. Rendu, Bishop of Annecy, to whose writings I have just referred, died last autumn.[A] He was a man of great repute in his diocese, and we owe to him one of the most remarkable essays upon glaciers that have ever appeared. His knowledge was extensive, his reasoning close and accurate, and his faculty of observation extraordinary. With these were a.s.sociated that intuitive power, that presentiment concerning things as yet untouched by experiment, which belong only to the higher cla.s.s of minds.
Throughout his essay a constant effort after quant.i.tative accuracy reveals itself. He collects observations, makes experiments, and tries to obtain numerical results; always taking care, however, so to state his premises and qualify his conclusions that n.o.body shall be led to ascribe to his numbers a greater accuracy than they merit. It is impossible to read his work, and not feel that he was a man of essentially truthful mind, and that science missed an ornament when he was appropriated by the Church.
The essay above referred to is printed in the tenth volume of the Memoirs of the Royal Academy of Sciences of Savoy, published in 1841, and is ent.i.tled, '_Theorie des Glaciers de la Savoie, par M. le Chanoine Rendu, Chevalier du Merite Civil et Secretaire perpetuel_.' The paper had been written for nearly two years, and might have remained unprinted, had not another publication on the same subject called it forth.
I will place a few of the leading points of this remarkable production before the reader; commencing with a generalization which is highly suggestive of the character of the author's mind.
[Sidenote: ”THEORIE DES GLACIERS DE LA SAVOIE.”]
He reflects on the acc.u.mulation of the mountain-snows, each year adding fifty-eight inches of ice to a glacier. This would make Mont Blanc four hundred feet higher in a century, and four thousand feet higher in a thousand years. ”It is evident,” he says, ”that nothing like this occurs in nature.” The escape of the ice then leads him to make some general remarks on what he calls the ”law of circulation.” ”The conserving will of the Creator has employed for the permanence of His work the great law of _circulation_, which, strictly examined, is found to reproduce itself in all parts of nature. The waters circulate from the ocean to the air, from the air to the earth, and from the earth to the ocean.... The elements of organic substances circulate, pa.s.sing from the solid to the liquid or aeriform condition, and thence again to the state of solidity or of organisation. That universal agent which we designate by the names of fire, light, electricity, and magnetism, has probably also a _circulation_ as wide as the universe.” The italics here are Rendu's own. This was published in 1841, but written, we are informed, nearly two years before. In 1842 Mr. Grove wrote thus:--”Light, heat, magnetism, motion, and chemical affinity, are all convertible material affections.” More recently Helmholtz, speaking of the ”circuit” formed by ”heat, light, electricity, magnetism, and chemical affinity,” writes thus:--”Starting from each of these different manifestations of natural forces, we can set every other in action.” I quote these pa.s.sages because they refer to the same agents as those named by M. Rendu, and to which he ascribes ”_circulation_.” Can it be doubted that this Savoyard priest had a premonition of the Conservation of Force? I do not want to lay more stress than it deserves upon a conjecture of this kind; but its harmony with an essay remarkable for its originality gives it a significance which, if isolated, it might not possess.
[Sidenote: GLACIERS RIGHTLY DIVIDED.]
With regard to the glaciers, Rendu commences by dividing them into two kinds, or rather the selfsame glacier into two parts, one of which he calls the ”_glacier reservoir_,” the other the ”_glacier d'ecoulement_,”--two terms highly suggestive of the physical relations.h.i.+p of the _neve_ and the glacier proper. He feeds the reservoirs from three sources, the princ.i.p.al one of which is the snow, to which he adds the rain, and the vapours which are condensed upon the heights without pa.s.sing into the state of either rain or snow. The conversion of the snow into ice he supposes to be effected by four different causes, the most efficacious of which is _pressure_.[B] It is needless to remark that this quite agrees with the views now generally entertained.
In page 60 of the volume referred to there is a pa.s.sage which shows that the ”veined structure” of the glacier had not escaped him, though it would seem that he ascribed it to stratification. ”When,” he writes, ”we perceive the profile of a glacier on the walls of a creva.s.se, we see different layers distinct in colour, but more particularly in density; some seem to have the hardness, as they have the greenish colour, of gla.s.s; others preserve the whiteness and porosity of the snow.” There is also a very close resemblance between his views of the influence of ”time and cohesion” and those of Prof. Forbes. ”We may conclude,” he writes, ”that _time_, favouring the action of _affinity_, and the pressure of the layers one upon the other, causes the little crystals of which snow is composed to approach each other, bring them into contact, and convert them into ice.”[C] Regelation also appears to have attracted his notice.[D] ”When we fill an ice-house,” he writes, ”we break the ice into very small fragments; afterwards we wet it with water 8 or 10 degrees above zero (Cent.) in temperature; but, notwithstanding this, the whole is converted into a compact ma.s.s of ice.” He moreover maintains, in almost the same language as Prof. Forbes,[E] the opinion, that ice has always an inner temperature lower than zero (Cent.). He believed this to be a property ”inherent to ice.” ”Never,” he says, ”can a calorific ray pa.s.s the first surface of ice to raise the temperature of the interior.”[F]
[Sidenote: OBSERVATIONS AND HYPOTHESES.]
He notices the direction of the glacier as influencing the wasting of its ridges by the sun's heat; ascribing to it the effect to which I have referred in explaining the wave-like forms upon the surface of the Mer de Glace. His explanation of the Moulins, too, though insufficient, a.s.signs a true cause, and is an excellent specimen of physical reasoning.
With regard to the diminution of the _glaciers reservoirs_, or, in other words, to the manner in which the ice disappears, notwithstanding the continual additions made to it, we have the following remarkable pa.s.sage:--”In seeking the cause of the diminution of glaciers, it has occurred to my mind that the ice, notwithstanding its hardness and its rigidity, can only support a given pressure without breaking or being squeezed out. According to this supposition, whenever the pressure exceeds that force, there will be rupture of the ice, and a flow in consequence. Let us take, at the summit of Mont Blanc, a column of ice reposing on a horizontal base. The ice which forms the first layer of that column is compressed by the weight of all the layers above it; but if the solidity of the said first layer can only support a weight equal to 100, when the weight exceeds this amount there will be rupture and spreading out of the ice of the base. Now, something very similar occurs in the immense crust of ice which covers the summits of Mont Blanc. This crust appears to augment at the upper surface and to diminish by the sides. To a.s.sure oneself that the movement is due to the force of pressure, it would be necessary to make a series of experiments upon the solidity of ice, such as have not yet been attempted.”[G] I may remark that such experiments substantially verify M. Rendu's notion.
But it is his observations and reasoning upon the _glaciers d'ecoulement_ that chiefly interest us. The pa.s.sages in his writings where he insists upon the power of the glaciers to mould themselves to their localities, and compares them to a soft paste, to lava at once ductile and liquid, are well known from the frequent and flattering references of Professor Forbes; but there are others of much greater importance, which have hitherto remained unknown in this country.
Regarding the motion of the Mer de Glace, Rendu writes as follows:--
[Sidenote: MEASUREMENT OF MOTION.]
[Sidenote: THE SIDES OF THE GLACIER r.e.t.a.r.dED.]
”I sought to appreciate the quant.i.ty of its motion; but I could only collect rather vague data. I questioned my guides regarding the position of an enormous rock at the edge of the glacier, but still upon the ice, and consequently partaking of its motion. The guides showed me the place where it stood the preceding year, and where it had stood two, three, four, and five years previously; they showed me the place where it would be found in a year, in two years, &c.; _so certain are they of the regularity of the motion_. Their reports, however, did not always agree precisely with each other, and their indications of time and distance lack the precision without which we proceed obscurely in the physical sciences. In reducing these different indications to a mean, I found the total advance of the glacier to be about 40 feet a year. During my last journey I obtained more certain data, which I have stated in the preceding chapter. _The enormous difference between the two results arises from the fact that the latter observations were made at the centre of the glacier_, WHICH MOVES MORE RAPIDLY, _while the former were made at the side, where the ice_ IS RETAINED BY THE FRICTION AGAINST ITS ROCKY WALLS.”[H]
An opinion, founded on a grave misapprehension which Rendu enables us to correct, is now prevalent in this country, not only among the general public, but also among those of the first rank in science. The nature of the mistake will be immediately apparent. At page 128 of the 'Travels in the Alps' its distinguished author gives a sketch of the state of our knowledge of glacier-motion previous to the commencement of his inquiries. He cites Ebel, Hugi, Aga.s.siz, Bakewell, De la Beche, s.h.i.+rwell, Rendu, and places them in open contradiction to each other.
Rendu, he says, gives the motion of the Mer de Glace to be ”242 feet per annum; 442 feet per annum; a foot a day; 400 feet per annum, and 40 feet per annum, or _one-tenth_ of the last!” ... and he adds, ”I was not therefore wrong in supposing that the actual progress of a glacier was yet a new problem when I commenced my observations on the Mer de Glace in 1842.”[I]
In the 'North British Review' for August, 1859, a writer equally celebrated for the brilliancy of his discoveries and the vigour of his pen, collected the data furnished by the above paragraph into a table, which he introduced to his readers in the following words:--”It is to Professor Forbes alone that we owe the first and most correct researches respecting the motion of glaciers; and in proof of this, we have only to give the following list of observations which had been previously made.
Observers. Name of glacier. Annual rate of motion.
Ebel Chamouni 14 feet Ebel Grindelwald 25 ”
Hugi Aar 240 ”
Aga.s.siz Aar 200 ”
Bakewell Mer de Glace 540 ”
De la Beche Mer de Glace 600 ”