in Scots Law, that causality in wardholding, by which the superior was entitled to a certain sum from his vassal, upon his attaining the age of puberty, as the value or avail of his tocher.

avalanches, a name given to prodigious snow-balls that frequently roll down the mountains in Savoy, particularly Mount Blanc, to the extreme danger of such adventurous travellers as attempt to ascend those stupendous heights. Some of the avalanches are about 200 feet diameter; being fragments of the ice-rocks which break by their own weight from the tops of the precipices. See Mount Blanc.