Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 45.djvu/425

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SKETCH OF HEINRICH HERTZ.

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and the University of Bonn. It may be questioned whether such utterances of sympathy and respect, much as they tend to make mankind feel itself as one, can offer consolation to those whose bereavement is greater than words are able to convey. However, what Mr. Lowell said in one of his simple and admirable memorial addresses is certainly true:

“It may seem paradox, but the only alleviation of such grief is a sense of the greatness and costliness of the sacrifice that gave birth to it, and this sense is brought home to us by the measure in which others appreciate our loss.”

Prof. Hubert Ludwig, of Bonn, uttered the last farewell at the grave of his friend and colleague. He expressed the sentiment of those grieving at his bier in these final words:

“This loss is so great that we are tempted to recall the old saying of the envy of the gods. But in this solemn hour let us resolutely banish such temptation, and instead of rebelling against destiny, let us at the open grave of this God-inspired investigator bow low our heads and hearts before the inscrutable.”

The importance of mountaineering from a geographical point of view, as is shown by Mr. Edward Swift Balch, in a paper on Mountain Exploration read before the Geographical Club of Philadelphia, is hardly understood by people in general. How much has been done by mountaineers from a geographical, a scientific, or an artistic impulse is hardly known, and the extent of field still open for mountain exploration and observation is not really appreciated. This field, represented by the mountains and mountain ranges in the five continents and the islands, covers something like one sixth of the globe. The first undoubted ascent of a glacier-bearing peak that of the Buet, by Jean André and Guillaume de Luc, of Geneva, in 1770 was for the scientific purpose of making some experiments on the atmosphere for Jean André's book, Researches on the Modifications of the Atmosphere. The earliest ascents in central Switzerland were made by monks in the love of geographical exploration; and in the greatest of these monks, Placidus a Spescha, scientific knowledge and a love of mineralogy and geology were added to a desire to know the boundaries and the formation of the mountains with which he was immediately surrounded. Mont Blanc was first ascended, with scientific ends, by the geologist De Saussure. In the record of the contributions of mountaineering to science we have the studies of glacial phenomena and the forms of water in ice and snow and clouds, made with care and trouble by such men as Tyndall, Forbes, Agassiz, Escher von der Linth, and Guyot, who have camped out on some occasions for weeks at a time; and the famous expedition of 1842, when the movements of glaciers were practically first determined, and when the investigators from Neuchâtel lived on the ice for two seasons, under the protecting shelter of a bowlder, which became known as the “Hôtel des Neuchâtelois.” The geology of the mountains and their botany and zoology have been studied. They have been utilized for astronomical and for weather observations; and the latest important attempt in this line is M. Jannsen's establishment of an observatory on the summit of Mont Blanc.

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