Natural History

The Glaciers of the Alps

by John Tyndall

John Tyndall, a physicist from County Carlow, went to the Alps in 1856 with Thomas Huxley to find out how glaciers move, and kept going back. This book of 1860 is half science and half climbing: measurements of the Mer de Glace and its crevasses beside his ascents of Mont Blanc and Monte Rosa. He argued that ice moves by breaking under pressure and freezing together again, against those who held that it flows like a thick liquid.

The librarian

Read it in the Library After Dark Or read it as plain text

Reading time

About 9 hr 35 min

Where to find it

The Mountain in the Painting

Edition

Project Gutenberg, eBook #34192. In the public domain in the United States.