and albeit the climate of Europe has not changed in historic times, and the world's rainfall is always the same, there are dry years and wet years, and it was thought that after a rainy winter glaciers waxed, and that after a droughty one they waned. But, as Professor Forel has lately shown, this theory does not accord with facts. The Grindelwald Pfarrbuch contains a record of the movements of the glacier for three centuries, and this record clearly proves that glaciers advance and retreat over periods which are measured by decades. A glacier wanes or waxes continuously for ten, fifteen, or even forty years; for equally long periods it may remain stationary, but it never goes forward one year and back the next. Thus, between 1540 and 1575 the lower Grindelwald glacier receded; from 1575 to 1602 it advanced; from 1602 to 1620 it remained stationary; 1703 marked a maximum of advance, 1720 a maximum of retreat; the next twenty-three years was a period of growth, the following forty years of backwardation. From 1776 to 1778 the movement was reversed. In 1819 another period of progression set in, the same in 1840; and the present cycle of waning began in 1855.

It is evident that during all these periods there must have been every sort of season; and the Zermatt guide was quite right when he said that a winter of heavy snowfall had no seeming effect in increasing the volume of glaciers. The cause of their periodic oscillations must be closely connected with the speed of their flow; for glaciers, it need hardly be said, have a streamlike movement, and the speed varies with the accumulations of snow in the higher parts of the mountain. If the winter snowfall be under the average, then is the speed of the icestream lessened; and the upper and lower parts, which are more exposed to the summer sun, melt more rapidly. From this results a thinning of the glacier and a wearing away of its extremity, and the diminution in its size and weight tend actually to check the rapidity of its flow. The reciprocal action and reaction of volume upon speed, and speed on volume, once begun, may, and do, go on for years, and the waste, however slight at first, becomes in the end very considerable. The glacier, so to speak, thaws before reaching

takes place whenever the flow is accelerated by an increased accumulation of snow on the névés, because in that case the glacier gets further down before it can be thawed. The latter process would be greatly helped by a series of wet and sunless summers, for rain in the valleys means snow on the mountains; and the less the sun shines the less the ice thaws. But even when white winters are succeeded by wet summers their effects on the swelling of glaciers is far from being immediately visible. Professor Forel is of opinion that the general shrinkage which began in 1856 was the consequence of the six droughty years between 1832 and 1838. Small glaciers are, of course, much sooner affected than large ones, and so much depends on the size and situation that no two advance or retreat at the same rate; it may even happen that of two neighboring glaciers, one may be waxing, and the other waning. If other things were equal,

and as touching glaciers it is not in the nature of things that they should be equal, a slight difference of exposure would cause the extremity of one to waste much faster than the extremity of the other. But, speaking broadly, the movements are of the same character all over the Alps, and now, as we have already suggested, the waning which has been going on for nearly a generation, seems to be effectually checked, and the coming decade may witness an advance all along the line. According to Professor Forbes, the cycle of waxing has already set in. The Mont Blanc glacier, which had been drawing back since 1846, is now creeping forward, as are also the Bossons, Tour, Breuve, Argentières, and Trient glaciers. This fact, first noticed last year, is confirmed by observations made during the present summer; and we have no doubt that before its close we shall have similar news from other Alpine districts. Hotel-keepers and guides, and all who had begun to fear that Switzerland was in danger of being shorn of its greatest attraction, may console themselves. Unless the climate of this hemisphere should suddenly become either torrid or hyperborean, the territory of the Confederation will continue to be the playground of Europe long after their children and their children's children have ceased to be.

From The Contemporary Review. LEO XIII.*

I.

GIOACCHINO PECCI, son of Count Lodovico Pecci and of Anna Prosperi, was born on March 10, 1810. He entered the Church at eighteen, became a priest at twenty-seven and a prelate at twenty-eight, and was at once appointed to Benevento, and then to Perugia; in 1843 he was nominated Archbishop of Damietta, and went into Belgium as nuncio; in 1846 he was made Bishop of Perugia, in 1853 car. dinal, in 1877 camerlingo of the Church, and on February 20, 1878, after a conclave of only thirty-six hours, pope. He presents in his own person a complete and splendid example of what an Italian priest may become under favorable circumstances. A member by birth of the lesser provincial nobility, a man of good natural capacity and of high culture, an admirable Latin and a good Italian writer, devout in spirit and rigidly orthodox in opinion, a sincere and entire believer in the past and future of the Church and in the importance of its influence on society even in the present day, accustomed to command, familiar with the habits and methods, as well as with the international relations of the court of Rome, advancing year by year in experience, in dignity, in authority such was Cardinal Pecci when the final election of the conclave

little time yet to live. His first act is that of March 4, 1878, in which, completing the work begun by Pius IX., he reconstitutes the episcopal hierarchy in Scotland. In the preamble, no less than in the act itself, the papacy shows its old consciousness of universal and paramount authority.

Lord;

From the supreme summit of the Apostolate [thus runs the preamble] to which, by no aid of our own merits, but by the Divine goodness so ordering it, we are now lately elevated, the Roman pontiffs, our predecessors, did not cease to cast their eyes, as from the peak of a high mountain, over every part of the field of that whatsoever in the lapse of years might most conduce to the maintenance, the they might not fail to discern; and hence, in so far at least as it was given them from on high, they were chiefly solicitous both everywhere among the nations to create new episcopal sees, and also to restore to new life those which by the attacks of time had been impaired.*

order, and the consolidation of all the churches

To the restoration of the Scotch sees, in particular, he finds himself encouraged by three considerations: first, the state of the Church in that country, and the daily increasing number of believers and of laborers in the Lord's vineyard, of churches, missions, religious houses, and other institutions of a similar kind, together with a corresponding increase of temporal support; secondly, the liberty allowed to Catholics by the illustrious British government; and thirdly, the urgent representations made to him by the apostolic vicars, and by very many persons, whether of the clergy or the laity, eminent both by their birth and vir tues.t

In the same fulness of papal power, and with a solicitude which seems to

"Ex supremo apostolatus apice, ad quem, nullo meritorum nostrorum suffragio, sed divina sic dispo nente Bonitate, nuper evecti sumus, Romani Pontifices Prædecessores nostri universas Dominici agri partes, quasi de montis vertice, nunquam destiterunt, ut quid Ecclesiarum omnium conditioni, decori, et firmamento labentibus annis magis conveniret, dignoscerent; ac proinde, quantum quidem Ipsis ab alto datum fuit, quemadmodum novas ubique gentium erigere episcopales sedes, ita eas quæ temporum iniuria perierant, ad novam vitam revocare solliciti in primis fuerant."

"Permulti, sive ex clericis, sive ex laicis, generis nobilitate ac virtutum laude spectati viri."