the first seven or eight minutes the swordpoint only indented the flesh, as usual. But then, says Montgéron, "her faith suddenly failing her, she cried out,' Ah! you will kill me!' No sooner had she pronounced the words than the sword pierced the flesh, making a wound two inches in depth." He alleges, further, that the instinct of the convulsionist informed her that the wound would have no bad consequences, and could be cured by severe blows of a club on the same spot; which, he declares, happened accordingly.* Besides the incidents above related, and a hundred others of similar character, which, if time and the reader's patience permitted, I might cull from Montgéron's pages, the restless enthusiasm of the convulsionists ultimately betrayed them into extravagances, in which it is often hard to decide whether the grotesque or the horrible more predominated. One convulsionist descended the long stairs of an infirmary head-foremost, lying on her back; another caused herself to be attached, by a rope round her neck, to a hook in the wall. A third repeated her prayers while turning somersets. A fourth, suspended by the feet, with the head hanging down, remained in that position three-quarters of an hour. A fifth, lying down on a tomb, caused herself to be covered to the neck with baked earth mixed with sand and saturated with vinegar. A sixth made her bed, in winter, on billets of wood; a seventh on bars of iron. The Sister Félicité was in the habit of causing herself to be nailed to the cross, and of remaining there half an hour at a time, gayly conversing with the pious who surrounded her. Another sister, named Scholas Montgéron, Tom. III. pp. 722, 723. The details are given by M. Morand, a surgeon of Paris of high reputation, member of the Academy of Sciences, who had been employed by the Lieutenant of Police to make to him a report on the subject, and who reproduces the result of his observations in his "Opuscules de Chirurgie." He found four tique, after long hesitation between different modes of mortification, having one day remarked the manner in which they constructed the pavement of the streets, had her dress tightly fastened below the knee, and then ordered one of the assistants to take her by the legs, and, with her head downward, to dash it :epeatedly against the tiled floor, after the fashior. of paviors, when using a rammer. "If," says Calmeil, "the idea had chanced to suggest itself to one of these theomaniacs, that disembowelling alive would be a sacrifice pleasing to the Supreme Being, she would undoubtedly have insisted upon being subjected to such a martyrdom." * The mental and physiological phenomena connected with this epidemic remain to be noticed, together with the theories and suggestions put forth by medical and other contemporary writers, in explanation of what has here been sketched, the substance of which is usually admitted by these commentators, however incredible, when related at this distance of time, it may appear. Next month the subject will be continued. girls, the centres of whose hands and feet were indurated by the frequent perforations of the nails. He witnessed the operation of crucifying one of them, the Sister Félicité. A certain M. La Barre was the operator. The nails were of the sort called demi-picaron, very sharp, flat, four-sided, and with a large head. They were driven, at a single blow of a hammer, nearly through the centre of the palm, between the third and fourth fingers; and in like manner through each foot a little above the toes and between the third and fourth; the same stroke causing the nail to enter also the wood of the Félicité gave no signs of sensibility during the operation. When attached to the cross, she was gay, and converse with whoever addressed her, remaining crucified nearly half an hour. Morand remarked, that her wounds were not at all bloody, and that very little blood flowed, even when the nails were withdrawn. See his "Opuscules de Chirurgie," Partie II. chap. 6. cross. * De la Folie, Tom. II.; the page I omitted to note. GLACIAL PERIOD. cial theory. Since then it has risen, phoenix-like, from its own funeral pile. Even when I arrived in England, many of my friends would fain have dissuaded me from my expedition, urging me to devote myself to special zoological stud logical problems of so speculative a character. "Punch " himself did not disdain to give me a gentle hint as to the folly of my undertaking, terming my journey into Scotland in search of moraines a sporting-expedition after “moor-hens.” Only one of my older scientific friends in England, a man who in earlier years had weathered a similar storm himself, shared my confidence in the investigations looked upon by others as so visionary, and offered to accompany me in my excursion to the North of England, Scotland. and Wales. I cannot recur to that delightful journey without a few words of grateful and affectionate tribute to the friend who sustained me by his sympathy and guided me by his knowledge and experience. In the early part of the summer of 1840, I started from Switzerland for England with the express object of finding traces of glaciers in Great Britain. This glacier-hunt was at that time a somewhat perilous undertaking for the reputation of a young naturalist like my-ies, and not to meddle with general geoself, since some of the greatest names in science were arrayed against the novel glacial theory. And it was not strange that it should be at first discredited by the scientific world, for hitherto all the investigations of geologists had gone to show that a degree of heat far greater than any now prevailing characterized the earlier periods of the world's history. Even Charpentier, my precursor and master in glacial research, who first showed the greater extent of Swiss glaciers in former times, had not thought of any more general application of his result, or connected their former boundaries with any great change in the climatic conditions of the whole continent. His explanation of the phenomena rested upon the assumption that the Alps formerly rose far beyond their present height; their greater altitude, he thought, would account for the existence of immense glaciers extending from the Alps across the plain of Switzerland to the Jura. Inexperienced as I then was, and ignorant of the modes by which new views, if founded on truth, commend themselves gradually to general acceptation, I was often deep ly depressed by the skepticism of men whose scientific position gave them a right to condemn the views of younger and less experienced students. I can smile now at the difficulties which then beset my path, but at the time they seemed serious enough. It is but lately, that, in turning over the leaves of a journal, published some twelve or fifteen years ago, to look for a forgotten date, I was amused to find a formal announcement, under the signature of the greatest geologist of Europe, of the demise of the gla For many years I had enjoyed the privilege of personal acquaintance with Dr. Buckland, and in 1834, when engaged in the investigation of fossil fishes, I had travelled with him through parts of England and Scotland, and had derived invaluable assistance from his friendly advice and direction. To him I was indebted for an introduction to all the geologists and palæontologists of Great Britain, with none of whom, except Lyell, had I any previous personal acquaintance; and through him I obtained not only leave to examine all the fossil fishes in public and private collections throughout England, but the unprecedented privilege of bringing them together for closer comparison in the rooms of the Geological Society of London. A few years later he visited Switzerland, when I had the pleasure of showing him, in my turn, the glacial phenomena of my native country, to the study of which I was then devoting all my spare time. After a thorough survey of the facts I had collected, he became satisfied that my interpretation of them was likely to prove correct, and even then be recalled phenomena of his own country, which, under the new light thrown upon them by the glacial phenomena of Switzerland, gave a promise of success to my extraordinary venture. We then resolved to pursue the inquiry together on the occasion of my next visit to England; and after the meeting in Glasgow of the British Association for Advancement of Science, we started together for the mountains of Scotland in search of traces of the glaciers, which, if there was any truth in the generalizations to which my study of the Swiss glaciers had led me, must have come down from the Grampian range, and reached the level of the sea, as they do now in Greenland. On the fourth of November of that year I read a paper before the Geological Society of London, containing a summary of the scientific results of that excursion, which I had extended with the same success to Ireland and parts of England. This paper was followed by one from Dr. Buckland himself, containing an account of his own observations, and another from Lyell on the same subject. From that time, the investigation of glaciers in regions where they no longer occur has been carried to almost every part of the globe. Before giving a more special account of this expedition, I will say a word of the mass of facts which I had brought from my Alpine researches, on which my own convictions were founded, and which seemed to Buckland worthy of careful consideration. To explain these more fully to my readers, I must leave the Scotch hills for a while, and beg them to return with me to Switzerland once more. Thus far I have spoken chiefly of the advance of glaciers, and very justly, since they are in constant onward motion, being kept within their limits only by a waste at their lower extremity propor tionate to their advance. But in considering the past history of glaciers, we must think of their changes as retrograde, not progressive movements; since, if the glacial theory be true, a great mass of ice, of which the present glaciers are but the remnants, formerly spread over the whole Northern hemisphere, and has gradually disappeared, until now no traces of it are to be found, except in the Arctic regions and in lofty mountainranges. Every terminal moraine, such as I described in the last article, is the retreating footprint of some glacier, as it slowly yielded its possession of the plain, and betook itself to the mountains; wherever we find one of these ancient semicircular walls of unusual size, there we may be sure the glacier resolutely set its icy foot, disputing the ground inch by inch, while heat and cold strove for the mastery. There may have been a succession of cold summers, or, if now and then a warmer summer intervened, a colder one followed, so that the glacier regained the next year the ground it had lost during the preceding one, thus continuing to oscillate for a number of years along the same line, and adding constantly to the débris collected at its extremity. Wherever such oscillations and pauses in the retreat of the glacier occurred, all the materials annually brought down to its terminus were collected; and when it finally disappeared from that point, it left a wall to mark its temporary restingplace. By these semicircular concentric walls we can trace the retreat of the ice as it withdrew from the plain of Switzerland to the fastnesses of the Alps. It paused at Berne, and laid the foundation of the present city, which is built on an ancient moraine; it made a stand again at the Lake of Thun, and barred its northern outlet by a wall which holds its waters back to this day. Other moraines, though less distinct, are visible nearer the base of the Bernese Alps, and, above Meyringen, the valley is spanned by one of very large dimensions. Again, on the other side of the first chain of high peaks, the glacier of the Rhone, descending the valley toward the Lake of Geneva, has everywhere left traces of its ancient extension. We find the valley crossed at various distances by concentric moraines, until we reach the lake. There are no less than thirteen concentric moraines immediately below the present termination of the glacier of the Rhone, the one nearest to the ice, and the last formed, marking its present boundary. Others are visible half a mile, a mile, and two or three miles beyond, near the villages of Obergestelen and Münster. One of the largest and finest of these ancient moraines of the glacier of the Rhone stands at Viesch, and extends across the whole valley, while the Rhone, already swollen by many mountain - torrents, has cut its way through it. Lower down, we meet with traces of other ancient glaciers, reaching laterally the main glacier, which occupied the centre of the valley: such was the glacier of Viesch, when it extended as far down as the village; such was the glacier of Aletsch, when it added its burden of ice to that coming from the upper valley; such was the glacier of the Simplon, whose moraines, of less antiquity, may now be seen by the road-side leading over the Alps to Italy; such were the two gigantic twin glaciers that drained the northern slopes of the mountaincolosses around Monte Rosa and Matterhorn, united at Stalden, and thence, losing their independence, became simply lateral tributaries of the great glacier of the Rhone; such were, farther on, the glaciers coming down from all the sidevalleys opening into the Rhone basin; such were the glaciers of the St. Bernard, It is desirable that the reader should look up these localities upon a map of Switzerland, that he may be impressed with the growing grandeur of these ancient glaciers, even while they were retreating into the heart of the Alps; for in proportion as they left the plain, the landscape must have gained in imposing effect in consequence of the isolation of these immense masses of ice, which in their united extension may have recalled rather the immensity of the ocean, than the grandeur of Alpine scenery. and even those of Chamouni, which in those early days crossed the Tête Noire to unite below Martigny with those that filled the valley of the Rhone. Thus the outlines of this glacier may be followed from its present remnant at the summit of the Valais, where the Rhone now springs forth from the ice, to the very shores of the Lake of Geneva, where, near the mouth of the river, on both banks of the valley, the ancient moraines may be traced to this day, thousands of feet above the level of the water, marking the course the glacier once followed. It is evident that here the remains of the glacier mark a process of retrogression; for had these successive walls of loose materials been deposited in consequence of the advance of the glacier, they would have been pushed together in one heap at its lower end. That such would have been the case is not mere inference, but has been determined by direct observation in other localities. We know, for instance, by historical record, (see Gruner's "Natural History of the Glaciers of Switzerland,") that in the seventeenth century a number of successive moraines existed at Grindelwald, which have since been driven together by the advance of the glacier, and now form but one. Indeed, we have ample traditional evidence of the oscillations of glacier-boundaries in recent times. When I was engaged in the investigation of this subject, I sought out all the chronicles kept in old convents or libraries which might throw any light upon it. Among other records, I chanced upon the following, which may have some interest for the historian as well as the geologist. During the religious wars of the sixteenth century, when the Catholics gained the ascendancy in the Canton of Valais, the inhabitants of the upper valleys adhered to the Protestant faith. Shut out from ordinary communication with the Protestant churches by the Bernese Oberland, the account states that these peasants braved every obstacle to the exercise of their religion, and used to |