. . .At last I am in Neuchatel, having, indeed, begun my lectures

some weeks ago. I have been received in a way I could never have

anticipated, and which can only be due to your good-will on my

behalf and your friendly recommendation. You have my warmest thanks

for the trouble you have taken about me, and for your continued

sympathy. Let me show you by my work in the years to come, rather

than by words, that I am in earnest about science, and that my

spirit is not irresponsive to a noble encouragement such as you

have given me.

You will have received my letter from Carlsruhe. Could I only tell

you all that I have since thought and observed about the history of

our earth's development, the succession of the animal populations,

and their genetic classification! It cannot easily be compressed

within letter limits; I will, nevertheless, attempt it when my

lectures make less urgent claim upon me, and my eyes are less

fatigued. I should defer writing till then were it not that to-day

I have something of at least outside interest to announce. It

concerns the inclosed letter received to-day. (The offer of a

professorship at Heidelberg.) Should you think that I need not take

it into consideration, and you have no time to answer me, let me

know your opinion by your silence. I will tell you the reasons

which would induce me to remain for the present in Neuchatel, and I

think you will approve them. First, as my lectures do not claim a

great part of my time I shall have the more to bestow on other

work; add to this the position of Neuchatel, so favorable for

observations such as I propose making on the history of development

in several classes of animals; then the hope of freeing myself from

the burden of my collections; and next, the quiet of my life here

with reference to my somewhat overstrained health. Beside my wish

to remain, these favorable circumstances furnish a powerful motive,

and then I am satisfied that people here would assist me with the

greatest readiness should my publications not succeed otherwise. As

to the publication of my fishes, I can, after all, better direct

the lithographing of the plates here. I have just written to Cotta

concerning this, proposing also that he should advance the cost of

the lithographs. I shall attend to it all carefully, and be content

for the present with my small means. From the gradual sale he can,

little by little, repay my expenses, and I shall ask no profit

until the success of the work warrants it. I await his answer. This

proposal seems to me the best and the most likely to advance the

publication of this work.

Since I arrived here some scientific efforts have been made with

the help of M. Coulon. We have already founded a society of Natural

History,* (* Societe des Sciences Naturelles de Neuchatel.) and I

hope, should you make your promised visit next year, you will find

this germ between foliage and flower at least, though perhaps not

yet ripened into seed. . .

M. Coulon told me the day before yesterday that he had spoken with

M. de Montmollin, the Treasurer, who would write to M. Ancillon

concerning the purchase of my collection. . .Will you have the

kindness, when occasion offers, to say a word to M. Ancillon about

it?. . .Not only would this collection be of the greatest value to

the museum here, but its sale would also advance my farther

investigations. With the sum of eighty louis, which is all that is

subscribed for my professorship, I cannot continue them on any

large scale.

I await now with anxiety Cotta's answer to my last proposition; but

whatever it be, I shall begin the lithographing of the plates

immediately after the New Year, as they must be carried on under my

own eye and direction. This I can well do since my uncle, Dr. Mayor

in Lausanne, gives me fifty louis toward it, the amount of one

year's pay to Weber, my former lithographer in Munich. I have

therefore written him to come, and expect him after New Year. With

my salary I can also henceforth keep Dinkel, who is now in Paris,

drawing the last fossils which I described. . .

No answer to this letter has been found beyond such as is implied

in the following to M. Coulon.

HUMBOLDT TO M. COULON, FILS.

BERLIN, January 21, 1833.

. . .It gives me great pleasure to acknowledge the flattering

welcome offered by you and your fellow-citizens to M. Agassiz, who

stands so high in science, and whose intellectual qualities are

enhanced by his amiable character. They write me from Heidelberg

that they intend the place of M. Leuckart in zoology for my young

friend. The choice is proposed by M. Tiedemann, and certainly

nothing could be more honorable to M. Agassiz. Nevertheless, I hope

that he will refuse it. He should remain for some years in your

country, where a generous encouragement facilitates the publication

of his work, which is of equal importance to zoology and geology.

I have spoken with M. Ancillon, and have left with him an official

notice respecting the purchase of the Agassiz collection. The

difficulty will be found, as in all human affairs, in the prose of

life, in money. M. Ancillon writes me this morning: "Your paper in

favor of M. Agassiz is a scientific letter of credit which we shall

try to honor. The acquisition of a superior man and a superior

collection at the same time would be a double conquest for the

principality of Neuchatel. I have requested a report from the

Council of State on the means of accomplishing this, and I hope

that private individuals may do something toward it." Thus you see

the affair is at least on the right road. I do not think, however,

that the royal treasury will give at present more than a thousand

Prussian crowns toward it. . .

Regarding the invitation to Heidelberg, Agassiz's decision was

already made. A letter to his brother toward the close of December

mentions that he is offered a professorship at the University of

Heidelberg, but that, although his answer has not actually gone, he

has resolved to decline it; adding that the larger salary is

counterbalanced in his mind by the hope of selling his collection

at Neuchatel, and thus freeing himself from a heavy burden.

Agassiz was now threatened with a great misfortune. Already, in

Paris, his eyes had begun to suffer from the strain of microscopic

work. They now became seriously impaired; and for some months he

was obliged to abate his activity, and to refrain even from writing

a letter. During this time, while he was shut up in a darkened

room, he practiced the study of fossils by touch alone, using even

the tip of the tongue to feel out the impression, when the fingers

were not sufficiently sensitive. He said he was sure at the time

that he could bring himself in this way to such delicacy of touch

that the loss of sight would not oblige him to abandon his work.

After some months his eyes improved, and though at times threatened

with a return of the same malady, he was able, throughout life, to

use his eyes more uninterruptedly than most persons. His lectures,

always delivered extemporaneously, do not seem to have been

suspended for any length of time.

The following letter from Agassiz to Humboldt is taken from a rough

and incomplete draught, which was evidently put aside (perhaps on

account of the trouble in his eyes), and only completed in the

following May. Although imperfect, it explains Humboldt's answer,

which is not only interesting in itself, but throws light on

Agassiz's work at this period.

AGASSIZ TO HUMBOLDT.

NEUCHATEL, January 27, 1833.

. . .A thousand thanks for your last most welcome letter. I can

hardly tell you what pleasure it gave me, or how I am cheered and

stimulated to new activity by intercourse with you on so intimate a

footing. Since I wrote you, some things have become more clear to

me, as, for instance, my purpose of publishing the "Fossil Fishes"

here. Certain doubts remain in my mind, however, about which, as

well as about other matters, I would ask your advice. Now that

Cotta is dead, I cannot wait till I have made an arrangement with

his successor. I therefore allow the "Fresh-Water Fishes" to lie by

and drive on the others. Upon careful examination I have found, to

my astonishment, that all necessary means for the publication of

such a work are to be had here: two good lithographers and two

printing establishments, both of which have excellent type. I have

sent for Weber to engrave the plates, or draw them on stone; he

will be here at the end of the month. Then I shall begin at once,

and hope in May to send out the first number. The great difficulty

remains now in the distribution of the numbers, and in finding a

sufficient sale so that they may follow each other with regularity.

I think it better to begin the publication as a whole than to send

out an abridgment in advance. The species can be characterized only

by good illustrations. A summary always requires farther

demonstration, whereas, if I give the plates at once I can shorten

the text and present the general results as an introduction to the

first number. With twelve numbers, of twenty plates each, followed

by about ten pages of text, I can tell all that I have to say. The

cost of one hundred and fifty copies printed here would, according

to careful inquiry, be covered by seventy subscriptions if the

price were put at one louis-d'or the number.

Now comes the question whether I should print more than one hundred

and fifty copies. On account of the expense I shall not preserve

the stones. For the distribution of the copies and the collecting

of the money could you, perhaps, recommend me to some house in

Berlin or Leipzig, who would take the work for sale in Germany on

commission under reasonable conditions? For England, I wrote

yesterday to Lyell, and to-morrow I shall write to Levrault and

Bossange.

Both the magistrates and private individuals here are now much

interested in public instruction, and I am satisfied that sooner or

later my collection will be purchased, though nothing has been said

about it lately.* (* His collection was finally purchased by the

city of Neuchatel in the spring of 1833.)

For a closer description of my family of Lepidostei, to which

belong all the ante-chalk bony fishes, I am anxious to have for

dissection a Polypterus Bichir and a Lepidosteus osseus, or any

other species belonging exclusively to the present creation.

Hitherto, I have only been able to examine and describe the

skeleton and external parts. If you could obtain a specimen of both

for me you would do me the greatest service. If necessary, I will

engage to return the preparations. I beg for this most earnestly.

Forgive the many requests contained in this letter, and see in it

only my ardent desire to reach my aim, in which you have already

helped me so often and so kindly.

HUMBOLDT TO AGASSIZ.

SANS SOUCI, July 4, 1833.

. . .I am happy in your success, my dear Agassiz, happy in your

charming letter of May 22nd, happy in the hope of having been able

to do something that may be useful to you for the subscription. The

Prince Royal's name seemed to me rather important for you. I have

delayed writing, not because I am one of the most persecuted men in

Europe (the persecution goes on crescendo; there is not a scholar

in Prussia or Germany having anything to ask of the King, or of M.

d'Altenstein, who does not think it necessary to make me his agent,

with power of attorney), but because it was necessary to await the

Prince Royal's return from his military circuit, and the

opportunity of speaking to him alone, which does not occur when I

am with the King.

Your prospectus is full of interest, and does ample justice to

those who have provided you with materials. To name me among them

was an affectionate deceit, the ruse of a noble soul like yours; I

am a little vexed with you about it.* (* The few words which called

forth this protest from Humboldt were as follows. After naming all

those from whom he had received help in specimens or otherwise,

Agassiz concludes:--"Finally, I owe to M. de Humboldt not only

important notes on fossil fishes, but so many kindnesses in

connection with my work that in enumerating them I should fear to

wound the delicacy of the giver." This will hardly seem an

exaggeration to those who know the facts of the case.)

Here is the beginning of a list. I think the Department of the

Mines de Province will take three or four more copies. We have not

their answer yet. Do not be frightened at the brevity of the list

. . .I am, however, the least apt of all men in collecting

subscriptions, seeing no one but the court, and forced to be out of

town three or four days in the week. On account of this same

inaptitude, I beg you to send me, through the publisher, only my

own three copies, and to address the others, through the publisher

also, to the individuals named on the list, merely writing on each

copy that the person has subscribed on the list of M. de Humboldt.

With all my affection for you, my dear friend, it would be

impossible for me to take charge of the distribution of your

numbers or the returns. The publishing houses of Dummler or of

Humblot and Dunker would be useful to you at Berlin. I find it

difficult to believe that you will navigate successfully among

these literary corsairs! I have had a short eulogium of your work

inserted in the Berliner Staats-Zeitung. You see that I do not

neglect your interests, and that, for love of you, I even turn

journalist. You have omitted to state in your prospectus whether

your plates are lithographed, as I fear they are, and also whether

they are colored, which seems to me unnecessary. Have your superb

original drawings remained in your possession, or are they included

in the sale of your collection?. . .

I could not make use of your letter to the King, and I have

suppressed it. You have been ill-advised as to the forms.

"Erhabener Konig" has too poetical a turn; we have here the most

prosaic and the most degrading official expressions. M. de Pfuel

must have some Arch-Prussian with him, who would arrange the

formula of a letter for you. At the head there must be "Most

enlightened, most powerful King,--all gracious sovereign and lord."

Then you begin, "Your Royal Majesty, deeply moved, I venture to lay

at your feet most humbly my warmest thanks for the support so

graciously granted to the purchase of my collection for the

Gymnasium in Neuchatel. Did I know how to write," etc. The rest of

your letter was very good; put only "so much grace as to answer"

instead of "so much kindness." You should end with the words, "I

remain till death, in deepest reverence, the most humble and

faithful servant of your Royal Majesty." The whole on small folio,

sealed, addressed outside, "To the King's Majesty, Berlin." Send

the letter, not through me, but officially, through M. de Pfuel.*

(* At the head there must be "Allerdurchlauchtigster,

grossmachtigster Konig,--allergnadigster Konig und Herr." Then you

begin, "Euer koniglichen Majestat, wage ich meinen lebhaftesten

Dank fur die allergnadigst bewilligte Unterstutzung zum Ankauf

meiner Sammlung fur das Gymnasium in Neuchatel tief geruhrt

allerunterthanigst zu Fussen zu legen. Wusste ich zu schreiben,"

etc. The rest of your letter was very good,--put only, "so vieler

Gnade zu entsprechen" instead of "so vieler Gute." You should end

with the words, "Ich ersterbe in tiefster Ehrfurcht Euer

koniglicher Majestat aller onter thanigsten getreuester." The whole

in small folio, sealed, addressed outside, "An des Konig's

Majestat, Berlin." These forms are no longer in use. They belong to

a past generation.)

The letter to the King is not absolutely necessary, but it will

give pleasure, for the King likes any affectionate demonstration

from the country that has now become yours.* (* It may not be known

to all readers that Neuchatel was then under Prussian sovereignty.)

It will be useful, also, with reference to our request for the

purchase of some copies, which we will make to the King as soon as

the first number has appeared. Had I obtained the King's name for

you to-day (which would have been difficult, since the King detests

subscriptions), we should have spoiled the sequence. It seems to me

that a letter of acknowledgment from you to M. Ancillon would be

very suitable also. Do not think it is too late. One addresses him

as "Monsieur et plus votre Excellence." I am writing the most

pedantic letter in the world in answer to yours, so full of charm.

It must seem to you absurd that I write you in French, when you,

French by origin, or rather by language, prefer to write me in

German. Pray tell me, did you learn German, which you write with

such purity, as a child?

I am happy to see that you publish the whole together. The

parceling out of such a work would have led to endless delays; but,

for mercy's sake, take care of your eyes; they are OURS. I have not

neglected the subscriptions in Russia, but I have, as yet, no

answer. At a venture, I have placed the name of M. von Buch on my

list. He is absent; it is said that he will go to Greece this

summer. Pray make it a rule not to give away copies of your work.

If you follow that inclination you will be pecuniarily ruined.

I wish I could have been present at your course of lectures. What

you tell me of them delights me, though I am ready to do battle

with you about those metamorphoses of our globe which have even

slipped into your title. I see by your letter that you cling to the

idea of internal vital processes of the earth, that you regard the

successive formations as different phases of life, the rocks as

products of metamorphosis. I think this symbolical language should

be employed with great reserve, I know that point of view of the

old "Naturphilosophie;" I have examined it without prejudice, but

nothing seems to me more dissimilar than the vital action of the

metamorphosis of a plant in order to form the calyx or the flower,

and the successive formation of beds of conglomerate. There is

order, it is true, in the superposed beds, sometimes an alternation

of the same substance, an interior cause,--sometimes even a

successive development, starting from a central heat; but can the

term "life" be applied to this kind of movement? Limestone does not

generate sandstone. I do not know that there exists what

physiologists call a vital force, different from, or opposed to,

the physical forces which we recognize in all matter; I think the

vital process is only a particular mode of action, of limitation of

those physical forces; action, the nature of which we have not yet

fully sounded. I believe there are nervous storms (electric) like

those which set fire to the atmosphere, but that special action

which we call organic, in which every part becomes cause or effect,

seems to me distinct from the changes which our planet has

undergone. I pause here, for I feel that I must annoy you, and I

care for you too much to run that risk. Moreover, a superior man

like yourself, my dear friend, floats above material things and

leaves a margin for philosophic doubt.

Farewell; count on the little of life that remains to me, and on my

affectionate devotion. At twenty-six years of age, and possessed of

so much knowledge, you are only entering upon life, while I am

preparing to depart; leaving this world far different from what I

hoped it would be in my youth. I will not forget the Bichir and the

Lepidosteus. Remember always that your letters give me the greatest

pleasure. . .

[P.S.] Look carefully at the new number of Poggendorf, in which you

will find beautiful discoveries of Ehrenberg (microscopical) on the

difference of structure between the brain and the nerves of motion,

also upon the crystals forming the silvered portion of the

peritoneum of Esox lucius.

In October, 1833, Agassiz's marriage to Cecile Braun, the sister of

his life-long friend, Alexander Braun, took place. He brought his

wife home to a small apartment in Neuchatel, where they began their

housekeeping after the simplest fashion, with such economy as their

very limited means enforced. Her rare artistic talent, hitherto

devoted to her brother's botanical pursuits, now found a new field.

Trained to accuracy in drawing objects of Natural History, she had

an artist's eye for form and color. Some of the best drawings in

the Fossil Fishes and the Fresh-Water Fishes are from her hand.

Throughout the summer, notwithstanding the trouble in his eyes,

Agassiz had been still pressing on these works. His two artists,

Mr. Dinkel and Mr. Weber, the former in Paris, the latter in

Neuchatel, were constantly busy on his plates.

Although Agassiz was at this time only twenty-six years of age, his

correspondence already shows that the interest of scientific men,

all over Europe, was attracted to him and to his work. From

investigators of note in his own country, from those of France,

Italy, and Germany, from England, and even from America, the

distant El Dorado of naturalists in those days, came offers of

cooperation, accompanied by fossil fishes or by the drawings of

rare or unique specimens. He was known in all the museums of Europe

as an indefatigable worker and collector, seeking everywhere

materials for comparison.

Among the letters of this date is one from Charpentier, one of the

pioneers of glacial investigation, under whose auspices, two years

later, Agassiz began his inquiries into glacial phenomena. He

writes him from the neighborhood of Bex, his home in the valley of

the Rhone, the classic land of glacial work; but he writes of

Agassiz's special subjects, inviting him to come and see such

fossils as were to be found in his neighborhood, and to investigate

certain phenomena of upheaval and of plutonic action in the same

region, little dreaming that the young zoologist was presently to

join him in his own chosen field of research.

Agassiz now began also to receive pressing invitations from the

English naturalists, from Buckland, Lyell, Murchison, and others,

to visit England, and examine their wonderful collections of fossil

remains.

FROM PROFESSOR BUCKLAND TO AGASSIZ.

OXFORD, December 25, 1833.

. . .I should very much like to put into your hands what few

materials I possess in the Oxford Museum relating to fossil fishes,

and am also desirous that you should see the fossil fish in the

various provincial museums of England, as well as in London. Sir

Philip Egerton has a very large collection of fishes from Engi and

Oeningen, which he wishes to place at your disposition. Like

myself, he would willingly send you drawings, but drawings made

without knowledge of the anatomical details which you require,

cannot well represent what the artist himself does not perceive. I

would willingly lend you my specimens, if I could secure them

against the barbarous hands of the custom-house officials. What I

would propose to you as a means of seeing all the collections of

England, and gaining at the same time additional subscriptions for

your work, is, that you should come to England and attend the

British Association for the Advancement of Science in September

next. There you will meet all the naturalists of England, and I do

not doubt that among them you will find a good many subscribers.

You will likewise see a new mine of fossil fishes in the clayey

schist of the coal formation at Newhaven, on the banks of the

Forth, near Edinburgh. You can also make arrangements to visit the

museums of York, Whitby, Scarborough, and Leeds, as well as the

museum of Sir Philip Egerton, on your way to and from Edinburgh.

You may, likewise, visit the museums of London, Cambridge, and

Oxford; everywhere there are fossil fishes; and traveling by coach

in England is so rapid, easy, and cheap, that in six weeks or less

you can accomplish all that I have proposed. As I seriously hope

that you will come to England for the months of August and

September, I say nothing at present of any other means of putting

into your hands the drawings or specimens of our English fossil

fishes. I forgot to mention the very rich collection of fossil

fishes in the Museum of Mr. Mantell, at Brighton, where, I think,

you could take the weekly steam-packet for Rotterdam as easily as

in London, and thus arrive in Neuchatel from London in a very few

days. . .

AGASSIZ TO PROFESSOR BUCKLAND.

. . .I thank you most warmly for the very important information you

have so kindly given me respecting the rich collections of England;

I will, if possible, make arrangements to visit them this year, and

in that case I will beg you to let me have a few letters of

recommendation to facilitate my examination of them in detail. Not

that I question for a moment the liberality of the English

naturalists. All the continental savants who have visited your

museums have praised the kindness shown in intrusting to them the

rarest objects, and I well know that the English rival other

nations in this respect, and even leave them far behind. But one

must have merited such favors by scientific labors; to a beginner

they are always a free gift, wholly undeserved. . .

A few months later Agassiz received a very gratifying and

substantial mark of the interest felt by English naturalists in his

work.

CHARLES LYELL TO LOUIS AGASSIZ.

SOMERSET HOUSE, LONDON, February 4, 1834.

. . .It is with the greatest pleasure that I announce to you good

news. The Geological Society of London desires me to inform you

that it has this year conferred upon you the prize bequeathed by

Dr. Wollaston. He has given us the sum of one thousand pounds

sterling, begging us to expend the interest, or about seven hundred

and fifty francs every year, for the encouragement of the science

of geology. Your work on fishes has been considered by the Council

and the officers of the Geological Society worthy of this prize,

Dr. Wollaston having said that it could be given for unfinished

works. The sum of thirty guineas, or 31 pounds 10 shillings

sterling, has been placed in my hands, but I would not send you the

money before knowing exactly where you were and learning from you

where you wish it to be paid. You will probably like an order on

some Swiss banker.

I cannot yet give you the extract from the address of the President

in which your work is mentioned, but I shall have it soon. In the

mean time I am desired to tell you that the Society declines to

receive your magnificent work as a gift, but wishes to subscribe

for it, and has already ordered a copy from the publishers. . .

AGASSIZ TO LYELL.

NEUCHATEL, March 25, 1834.

. . .You cannot imagine the joy your letter has given me. The prize

awarded to me is at once so unexpected an honor and so welcome an

aid that I could hardly believe my eyes when, with tears of relief

and gratitude, I read your letter. In the presence of a savant, I

need not be ashamed of my penury, since I have spent the little I

had, wholly in scientific researches. I do not, therefore, hesitate

to confess to you that at no time could your gift have given me

greater pleasure. Generous friends have helped me to bring out the

first number of my "Fossil Fishes;" the plates of the second are

finished, but I was greatly embarrassed to know how to print a

sufficient number of copies before the returns from the first

should be paid in. The text is ready also, so that now, in a

fortnight, I can begin the distribution, and, the rotation once

established, I hope that preceding numbers will always enable me to

publish the next in succession without interruption. I even count

upon this resource as affording me the means of making a journey to

England before long. If no obstacle arises I hope to accomplish

this during the coming summer, and to be present at the next

meeting of the English naturalists.

I do not live the less happily on account of my anxieties, but I am

sometimes obliged to work more than I well can, or ought in reason

to do. . .The second number of my "Fossil Fishes" contains the

beginning of the anatomy of the fishes, but only such portions as

are to be found in the fossil state. I have begun with the scales;

later, I treat of the bones and the teeth. Then comes the

continuation of the description of the Ganoids and the Scomberoids,

and an additional sheet contains a sketch of my ichthyological

classification. The plates are even more successful than those of

the first number. If all goes well the third number will appear

next July. I long to visit your rich collections; I hope that

whenever it becomes possible for me to do so, I shall have the good

fortune to find you in London. . .

I have thought a letter addressed to the President of the Society

in particular, and to the members in general, would be fitting.

Will you have the kindness to deliver it for me to Mr. Murchison?

The first number of the "Fossil Fishes" had already appeared, and

had been greeted with enthusiasm by scientific men. Elie de

Beaumont writes Agassiz in June, 1834: "I have read with great

pleasure your first number; it promises us a work as important for

science as it is remarkable in execution. Do not let yourself be

discouraged by obstacles of any kind; they will give way before the

concert of approbation which so excellent a work will awaken. I

shall always be glad to aid in overcoming any one of them."

Perhaps it is as well to give here a slight sketch of this work,

the execution of which was carried on during the next ten years

(1833-1843). The inscription tells, in few words, the author's

reverence for Humboldt and his personal gratitude to him. "These

pages owe to you their existence; accept their dedication." The

title gives in a broad outline the comprehensive purpose of the

work:

"Researches on the Fossil Fishes: comprising an Introduction to the

Study of these Animals; the Comparative Anatomy of Organic Systems

which may contribute to facilitate the Determination of Fossil

Species; a New Classification of Fishes expressing their Relations

to the Series of Formations; the Explanation of the Laws of their

Succession and Development during all the Changes of the

Terrestrial Globe, accompanied by General Geological

Considerations; finally, the Description of about a thousand

Species which no longer exist, and whose Characters have been

restored from Remains contained in the Strata of the Earth."

The most novel results comprised in this work were: first, the

remodeling of the classification of the whole type of fishes,

fossil and living, and especially the separation of the Ganoids

from all other fishes, under the rank of a distinct order; second,

the recognition of those combinations of reptilian and bird-like

characters in the earlier geological fishes, which led the author

to call them prophetic types; and third, his discovery of an

analogy between the embryological phases of the higher present

fishes and the gradual introduction of the whole type on earth, the

series in growth and the series in time revealing a certain mutual

correspondence. As these comprehensive laws have thrown light upon

other types of the animal kingdom beside that of fishes, their

discovery may be said to have advanced general zoology as well as

ichthyology.

The Introduction presents, as it were, the prelude to this vast

chapter of natural history in the simultaneous appearance of the

four great types of the animal kingdom: Radiates, Mollusks,

Articulates, and Vertebrates. Then comes the orderly development of

the class by which the vertebrate plan was first expressed, namely,

the fishes. Underlying all its divisions and subdivisions, is the

average expression of the type in the past and present; the

Placoids and Ganoids, with their combination of reptilian and

fishlike features, characterizing the earlier geological epochs,

while in the later the simple bony fishes, the Cycloids and

Ctenoids, take the ascendancy. Here, for the first time, Agassiz

presents his "synthetic or prophetic types," namely, early types

embracing, as it were, in one large outline, features afterward

individualized in special groups, and never again reunited. No less

striking than these general views of structural relations are the

clearness and simplicity with which the distribution of the whole

class of fishes in relation to the geological formations, or, in

other words, to the physical history of the earth, is shown. In

reading this introductory chapter, one familiar with Agassiz as a

public teacher will almost hear his voice marshaling the long

procession of living beings, as he was wont to do, in their gradual

introduction upon the earth. Indeed, his whole future work in

ichthyology, and one might almost say in general zoology, was here

sketched.

The technicalities of this work, at once so comprehensive in its

combinations and so minute in its details, could interest only the

professional reader, but its generalizations may well have a

certain attraction for every thoughtful mind. It treats of the

relations, anatomical, zoological, and geological, between the

whole class of fishes, fossil and living, illustrated by numerous

plates, while additional light is thrown on the whole by the

revelations of embryology.

"Notwithstanding these striking differences," says the author in

the opening of the fifth chapter on the relations of fishes in

general, "it is none the less evident to the attentive observer

that one single idea has presided over the development of the whole

class, and that all the deviations lead back to a primary plan, so

that even if the thread seem broken in the present creation, one

can reunite it on reaching the domain of fossil ichthyology."* (*

Volume 1 chapter 5 pages 92, 93.)

Having shown how the present creation has given him the key to past

creations, how the complete skeleton of the living fishes has

explained the scattered fragments of the ancient ones, especially

those of which the soft cartilaginous structure was liable to

decay, he presents two modes of studying the type as a whole;

either in its comparative anatomy, including in the comparison the

whole history of the type, fossil and living, or in its comparative

embryology. "The results," he adds, "of these two methods of study

complete and control each other." In all his subsequent researches

indeed, the history of the individual in its successive phases went

hand in hand with the history of the type. He constantly tested his

zoological results by his embryological investigations.

After a careful description of the dorsal chord in its

embryological development, he shows that a certain parallelism

exists between the comparative degrees of development of the

vertebral column in the different groups of fishes, and the phases

of its embryonic development in the higher fishes. Farther on he

shows a like coincidence between the development of the system of

fins in the different groups of fishes, and the gradual growth and

differentiation of the fins in the embryo of the higher living

fishes.* (* "Recherches sur les Poissons Fossiles", volume 1

chapter 5 page 102.) "There is, then," he concludes, "as we have

said above, a certain analogy, or rather a certain parallelism, to

be established between the embryological development of the

Cycloids and Ctenoids, and the genetic or paleontological

development of the whole class. Considered from this point of view,

no one will dispute that the form of the caudal fin is of high

importance for zoological and paleontological considerations, since

it shows that the same thought, the same plan, which presides

to-day over the formation of the embryo, is also manifested in the

successive development of the numerous creation which have formerly

peopled the earth." Agassiz says himself in his Preface: "I have

succeeded in expressing the laws of succession and of the organic

development of fishes during all geological epochs; and science may

henceforth, in seeing the changes of this class from formation to

formation, follow the progress of organization in one great

division of the animal kingdom, through a complete series of the

ages of the earth." This is not inconsistent with his position as

the leading opponent of the development or Darwinian theories. To

him, development meant development of plan as expressed in

structure, not the change of one structure into another. To his

apprehension the change was based upon intellectual, not upon

material causes. He sums up his own conviction with reference to

this question as follows:* (* "Recherches sur les Poissons

Fossiles" volume 1 chapter 6 pages 171, 172. "Essay on the

Classification of Fishes.") "Such facts proclaim aloud principles

not yet discussed in science, but which paleontological researches

place before the eyes of the observer with an ever-increasing

persistency. I speak of the relations of the creation with the

creator. Phenomena closely allied in the order of their succession,

and yet without sufficient cause in themselves for their

appearance; an infinite diversity of species without any common

material bond, so grouping themselves as to present the most

admirable progressive development to which our own species is

linked,--are these not incontestable proofs of the existence of a

superior intelligence whose power alone could have established such

an order of things?. . ."

"More than fifteen hundred species of fossil fishes, which I have

learned to know, tell me that species do not pass insensibly one

into another, but that they appear and disappear unexpectedly,

without direct relations with their precursors; for I think no one

will seriously pretend that the numerous types of Cycloids and

Ctenoids, almost all of which are contemporaneous with one an

other, have descended from the Placoids and Ganoids. As well might

one affirm that the Mammalia, and man with them, have descended

directly from fishes. All these species have a fixed epoch of

appearance and disappearance; their existence is even limited to an

appointed time. And yet they present, as a whole, numerous

affinities more or less close, a definite coordination in a given

system of organization which has intimate relations with the mode

of existence of each type, and even of each species. An invisible

thread unwinds itself throughout all time, across this immense

diversity, and presents to us as a definite result, a continual

progress in the development of which man is the term, of which the

four classes of vertebrates are intermediate forms, and the

totality of invertebrate animals the constant accessory

accompaniment."

The difficulty of carrying out comparisons so rigorous and

extensive as were needed in order to reconstruct the organic

relations between the fossil fishes of all geological formations

and those of the present world, is best told by the author.* (*

"Recherches sur les Poissons Fossiles" volume 1. Addition a la

Preface.) "Possessing no fossil fishes myself, and renouncing

forever the acquisition of collections so precious, I have been

forced to seek the materials for my work in all the collections of

Europe containing such remains; I have, therefore, made frequent

journeys in Germany, in France, and in England, in order to

examine, describe, and illustrate the objects of my researches. But

notwithstanding the cordiality with which even the most precious

specimens have been placed at my disposition, a serious

inconvenience has resulted from this mode of working, namely, that

I have rarely been able to compare directly the various specimens

of the same species from different collections, and that I have

often been obliged to make my identification from memory, or from

simple notes, or, in the more fortunate cases, from my drawings

only. It is impossible to imagine the fatigue, the exhaustion of

all the faculties, involved in such a method. The hurry of

traveling, joined to the lack of the most ordinary facilities for

observation, has not rendered my task more easy. I therefore claim

indulgence for such of my identifications as a later examination,

made at leisure, may modify, and for descriptions which sometimes

bear the stamp of the precipitation with which they have been

prepared."

It was, perhaps, this experience of Agassiz's earlier life which

made him so anxious to establish a museum of comparative zoology in

this country,--a museum so abundant and comprehensive in material,

that the student should not only find all classes of the animal

kingdom represented within its walls, but preserved also in such

numbers as to allow the sacrifice of many specimens for purposes of

comparison and study. He was resolved that no student should stand

there baffled at the door of knowledge, as he had often done

himself, when shown the one precious specimen, which could not be

removed, or even examined on the spot, because unique.

CHAPTER 8.

1834-1837: AGE 27-30.

First Visit to England.

Reception by Scientific Men.

Work on Fossil Fishes there.

Liberality of English Naturalists.

First Relations with American Science.

Farther Correspondence with Humboldt.

Second Visit to England.

Continuation of "Fossil Fishes."

Other Scientific Publications.

Attention drawn to Glacial Phenomena.

Summer at Bex with Charpentier.

Sale of Original Drawings for "Fossil Fishes."

Meeting of Helvetic Society.

Address on Ice-Period.

Letters from Humboldt and Von Buch.

In August, 1834, according to his cherished hope, Agassiz went to

England, and was received by the scientific men with a cordial

sympathy which left not a day or an hour of his short sojourn there

unoccupied. The following letter from Buckland is one of many

proffering hospitality and friendly advice on his arrival.

DR. BUCKLAND TO LOUIS AGASSIZ.

OXFORD, August 26, 1834.

. . .I am rejoiced to hear of your safe arrival in London, and

write to say that I am in Oxford, and that I shall be most happy to

receive you and give you a bed in my house if you can come here

immediately. I expect M. Arago and Mr. Pentland from Paris tomorrow

(Wednesday) afternoon. I shall be most happy to show you our Oxford

Museum on Thursday or Friday, and to proceed with you toward

Edinburgh. Sir Philip Egerton has a fine collection of fossil

fishes near Chester, which you should visit on your road. I have

partly engaged myself to be with him on Monday, September 1st, but

I think it would be desirable for you to go to him Saturday, that

you may have time to take drawings of his fossil fishes.

I cannot tell certainly what day I shall leave Oxford until I see

M. Arago, whom I hope you will meet at my house, on your arrival in

Oxford. I shall hope to see you Wednesday evening or Thursday

morning. Pray come to my house in Christ Church, with your baggage,

the moment you reach Oxford. . .

Agassiz always looked back with delight on this first visit to

Great Britain. It was the beginning of his life-long friendship

with Buckland, Sedgwick, Murchison, Lyell, and others of like

pursuits and interests. Made welcome in many homes, he could

scarcely respond to all the numerous invitations, social and

scientific, which followed the Edinburgh meeting.

Guided by Dr. Buckland, to whom not only every public and private

collection, but every rare specimen in the United Kingdom, seems to

have been known, he wandered from treasure to treasure. Every day

brought its revelation, until, under the accumulation of new facts,

he almost felt himself forced to begin afresh the work he had

believed well advanced. He might have been discouraged by a wealth

of resources which seemed to open countless paths, leading he knew

not whither, but for the generosity of the English naturalists who

allowed him to cull, out of sixty or more collections, two thousand

specimens of fossil fishes, and to send them to London, where, by

the kindness of the Geological Society, he was permitted to deposit

them in a room in Somerset House. The mass of materials once sifted

and arranged, the work of comparison and identification became

comparatively easy. He sent at once for his faithful artist, Mr.

Dinkel, who began, without delay, to copy all such specimens as

threw new light on the history of fossil fishes, a work which

detained him in England for several years.

Agassiz made at this time two friends, whose sympathy and

cooperation in his scientific work were invaluable to him for the

rest of his life. Sir Philip Egerton and Lord Cole (Earl of

Enniskillen) owned two of the most valuable collections of fossil

fishes in Great Britain.* (* Now the property of the British

Museum.) To aid him in his researches, their most precious

specimens were placed at Agassiz's disposition; his artist was

allowed to work for months on their collections, and even after

Agassiz came to America, they never failed to share with him, as

far as possible, the advantages arising from the increase of their

museums. From this time his correspondence with them, and

especially with Sir Philip Egerton, is closely connected with the

ever-growing interest as well as with the difficulties of his

scientific career. Reluctantly, and with many a backward look, he

left England in October, and returned to his lectures in Neuchatel,

taking with him such specimens as were indispensable to the

progress of his work. Every hour of the following winter which

could be spared from his lectures was devoted to his fossil fishes.

A letter of this date from Professor Silliman, of New Haven,

Connecticut, marks the beginning of his relations with his future

New England home, and announces his first New England subscribers.

YALE COLLEGE NEW HAVEN, UNITED STATES OF NORTH AMERICA, April 22,

1835.

. . .From Boston, March 6th, I had the honor to thank you for your

letter of January 5th, and for your splendid present of your great

work on fossil fishes--livraison 1-22--received, with the plates. I

also gave a notice of the work in the April number of the Journal*

(* "The American Journal of Science and Arts".) (this present

month), and republished Mr. Bakewell's account of your visit to Mr.

Mantell's museum.

In Boston I made some little efforts in behalf of your work, and

have the pleasure of naming as follows:--

Harvard University, Cambridge (Cambridge is only four miles from

Boston), by Hon. Josiah Quincy, President.

Boston Athenaeum, by its Librarian.

Benjamin Green, Esquire, President of the Boston Natural History

Society.

I shall make application to some other institutions or individuals,

but do not venture to promise anything more than my best exertions

. . .

Agassiz little dreamed, as he read this letter, how familiar these

far-off localities would become to him, or how often, in after

years, he would traverse by day and by night the four miles which

lay between Boston and his home in Cambridge.

Agassiz still sought and received, as we see by the following

letter, Humboldt's sympathy in every step of his work.

HUMBOLDT TO LOUIS AGASSIZ.

BERLIN, May, 1835.

I am to blame for my neglect of you, my dear friend, but when you

consider the grief which depresses me,* (* Owing to the death of

his brother, William von Humboldt.) and renders me unfit to keep up

my scientific connections, you will not be so unkind as to bear me

any ill-will for my long silence. You are too well aware of my high

esteem for your talents and your character--you know too well the

affectionate friendship I bear you--to fear for a moment that you

could be forgotten.

I have seen the being I loved most, and who alone gave me some

interest in this arid land, slowly decline. For four long years my

brother had suffered from a weakness of all the muscles, which made

me always fear that the seat of the trouble was the medulla

oblongata. Yet his step was firm; his head was entirely clear. The

higher intellectual faculties retained all their energy. He was

engaged from twelve to thirteen hours a day on his works, reading

or rather dictating, for a nervous trembling of the hand prevented

him from using a pen. Surrounded by a numerous family; living on a

spot created, so to speak, by himself, and in a house which he had

adorned with antique statues; withdrawn also from affairs, he was

still attached to life. The illness which carried him off in ten

days--an inflammation of the chest--was but a secondary symptom of

his disease. He died without pain, with a strength of character and

a serenity of mind worthy of the greatest admiration. It is cruel

to see so noble an intelligence struggle during ten long days

against physical destruction. We are told that in great grief we

should turn with redoubled energy to the study of nature. The

advice is easy to give; but for a long time even the wish for

distraction is wanting.

My brother leaves two works which we intend to publish: one upon

the languages and ancient Indian civilization of the Asiatic

archipelago, and the other upon the structure of languages in

general, and the influence of that structure upon the intellectual

development of nations. This last work has great beauty of style.

We shall soon begin the publication of it. My brother's extensive

correspondence with all those countries over which his philological

studies extended brings upon me just at present, such a

multiplicity of occupations and duties that I can only write you

these few lines, my dear friend, as a pledge of my constant

affection, and, I may also add, my admiration of your eminent

works. It is a pleasure to watch the growing renown of those who

are dear to us; and who should merit success more than you, whose

elevation of character is proof against the temptations of literary

self-love? I thank you for the little you have told me of your home

life. It is not enough to be praised and recognized as a great and

profound naturalist; to this one must add domestic happiness as

well. . .

I am about finishing my long and wearisome work of (illegible); a

critical examinationinto the geography of the Middle Ages, of which

fifty sheets are already printed. I will send you the volumes as

soon as they appear, in octavo. I devoured your fourth number; the

plates are almost finer than the previous ones; and the text,

though I have only looked it through hastily, interested me deeply,

especially the analytical catalogue of Bolca, and the more general

and very philosophical views of fishes in general, pages 57-64. The

latter is also remarkable in point of style. . .

M. von Buch, who has just left me, sends you a warm greeting. None

the less does he consider the method of issuing your text in

fragments from different volumes, altogether diabolical. I also

complain a little, though in all humility; but I suppose it to be

connected with the difficulty of concluding any one family, when

new materials are daily accumulating on your hands. Continue then

as before. In my judgment, M. Agassiz never does wrong. . .

The above letter, though written in May, did not reach Agassiz

until the end of July, when he was again on his way to England,

where his answer is dated.

AGASSIZ TO HUMBOLDT.

(LONDON), October--, 1835.

. . .I cannot express to you my pleasure in reading your letter of

May 10th (which was, unhappily, only delivered to me on my passage

through Carlsruhe, at the end of July). . .To know that I have

occupied your thoughts a moment, especially in days of trial and

sorrow such as you have had to bear, raises me in my own eyes, and

redoubles my hope for the future. And just now such encouragement

is particularly cheering under the difficulties which I meet in

completing my task in England. I have now been here nearly two

months, and I hope before leaving to finish the description of all

that I brought together at the Geological Society last year.

Knowing that you are in Paris, however, I cannot resist the

temptation of going to see you; indeed, should your stay be

prolonged for some weeks, it would be my most direct path for home.

I should like to tell you a little of what I have done, and how the

world has gone with me since we last met. . .I have certainly

committed an imprudence in throwing myself into an enterprise so

vast in proportion to my means as my "Fossil Fishes." But, having

begun it, I have no alternative; my only safety is in success. I

have a firm conviction that I shall bring my work to a happy issue,

though often in the evening I hardly know how the mill is to be

turned to-morrow. . .

By a great good fortune for me, the British Association, at the

suggestion of Buckland, Sedgwick, and Murchison, has renewed, for

the present year, its vote of one hundred guineas toward the

facilitating of researches upon the fossil fishes of England, and I

hope that a considerable part of this sum may be awarded to me, in

which case I may be able to complete the greater number of the

drawings I need. If I had obtained in France only half the

subscriptions I have had in England, I should be afloat; but thus

far M. Bailliere has only disposed of some fifteen copies. . .My

work advances fairly; I shall soon have described all the species I

know, numbering now about nine hundred. I need some weeks in Paris

for the comparison of several tertiary species with living ones in

order to satisfy myself of their specific identity, and then my

task will be accomplished. Next comes the putting in order of all

my notes. My long vacations will give me time to do this with the

greatest care. . .

His second visit to England, during which the above letter was

written, was chiefly spent in reviewing the work of his artist,

whom he now reinforced with a second draughtsman, M. Weber, the

same who had formerly worked with him in Munich. He also attended

the meeting of the British Association in Dublin, stayed a few days

at Oulton Park for another look at the collections of Sir Philip

Egerton, made a second grand tour among the other fossil fishes of

England and Ireland, and returned to Neuchatel, leaving his two

artists in London with their hands more than full.

While Agassiz thus pursued his work on fossil fishes with ardor and

an almost perilous audacity, in view of his small means, he found

also time for various other investigations. During the year 1836,

though pushing forward constantly the publication of the "Poissons

Fossiles," his "Prodromus of the Class of Echinodermata" appeared

in the Memoirs of the Natural History Society of Neuchatel, as well

as his paper on the fossil Echini belonging to the Neocomian group

of the Neuchatel Jura, accompanied by figures. Not long after, he

published in the Memoirs of the Helvetic Society his descriptions

of fossil Echini peculiar to Switzerland, and issued also the first

number of a more extensive work, "Monographie d'Echinodermes."

During this year he received a new evidence of the sympathy of the

English naturalists, in the Wollaston medal awarded to him by the

London Geological Society.

The summer of 1836 was an eventful one for Agassiz,--the opening,

indeed, of a new and brilliant chapter in his life. The attention

of the ignorant and the learned had alike been called to the

singular glacial phenomena of movement and transportation in the

Alpine valleys. The peasant had told his strange story of boulders

carried on the back of the ice, of the alternate retreat and

advance of glaciers, now shrinking to narrower limits, now plunging

forward into adjoining fields, by some unexplained power of

expansion and contraction. Scientific men were awake to the

interest of these facts, but had considered them only as local

phenomena. Venetz and Charpentier were the first to detect their

wider significance. The former traced the ancient limits of the

Alpine glaciers as defined by the frame-work of debris or loose

material they had left behind them; and Charpentier went farther,

and affirmed that all the erratic boulders scattered over the plain

of Switzerland and on the sides of the Jura had been thus

distributed by ice and not by water, as had been supposed.

Agassiz was among those who received this hypothesis as improbable

and untenable. Still, he was anxious to see the facts in place, and

Charpentier was glad to be his guide. He therefore passed his

vacation, during this summer of 1836, at the pretty town of Bex, in

the valley of the Rhone. Here he spent a number of weeks in

explorations, which served at the same time as a relaxation from

his more sedentary work. He went expecting to confirm his own

doubts, and to disabuse his friend Charpentier of his errors. But

after visiting with him the glaciers of the Diablerets, those of

the valley of Chamounix, and the moraines of the great valley of

the Rhone and its principal lateral valleys, he came away satisfied

that a too narrow interpretation of the phenomena was Charpentier's

only mistake.

During this otherwise delightful summer, he was not without renewed

anxiety lest he should be obliged to suspend the publication of the

Fossil Fishes for want of means to carry it on. On this account he

writes from Bex to Sir Philip Egerton in relation to the sale of

his original drawings, the only property he possessed. "It is

absolutely impossible," he says, "for me to issue even another

number until this sale is effected. . .I shall consider myself more

than repaid if I receive, in exchange for the whole collection of

drawings, simply what I have expended upon them, provided I may

keep those which have yet to be lithographed until that be done."

Sir Philip made every effort to effect a sale to the British

Museum. He failed at the moment, but the collection was finally

purchased and presented to the British Museum by a generous

relative of his own, Lord Francis Egerton. In the mean time, Sir

Philip and Lord Cole, in order to make it possible for Agassiz to

retain the services of Mr. Dinkel, proposed to pay his expenses

while he was drawing such specimens from their own collections as

were needed for the work. These drawings were, of course, finally

to remain their own property.

During his sojourn at Bex, Agassiz's intellect and imagination had

been deeply stirred by the glacial phenomena. In the winter of

1837, on his return to Neuchatel, he investigated anew the slopes

of the Jura, and found that the facts there told the same story.

Although he resumed with unabated ardor his various works on

fishes, radiates, and mollusks, a new chapter of nature was all the

while unfolding itself in his fertile brain. When the Helvetic

Association assembled at Neuchatel in the following summer, the

young president, from whom the members had expected to hear new

tidings of fossil fishes, startled them by the presentation of a

glacial theory, in which the local erratic phenomena of the Swiss

valleys assumed a cosmic significance. It is worthy of remark here

that the first large outlines in which Agassiz, when a young man,

planned his intellectual work gave the key-note to all that

followed. As the generalizations on which all his future zoological

researches were based, are sketched in the Preface to his "Poissons

Fossiles," so his opening address to the Helvetic Society in 1837

unfolds the glacial period as a whole, much as he saw it at the

close of his life, after he had studied the phenomena on three

continents. In this address he announced his conviction that a

great ice-period, due to a temporary oscillation of the temperature

of the globe, had covered the surface of the earth with a sheet of

ice, extending at least from the north pole to Central Europe and

Asia. "Siberian winter," he says, "established itself for a time

over a world previously covered with a rich vegetation and peopled

with large mammalia, similar to those now inhabiting the warm

regions of India and Africa. Death enveloped all nature in a

shroud, and the cold, having reached its highest degree, gave to

this mass of ice, at the maximum of tension, the greatest possible

hardness." In this novel presentation the distribution of erratic

boulders, instead of being classed among local phenomena, was

considered "as one of the accidents accompanying the vast change

occasioned by the fall of the temperature of our globe before the

commencement of our epoch."

This was, indeed, throwing the gauntlet down to the old expounders

of erratic phenomena upon the principle of floods, freshets, and

floating ice. Many well-known geologists were present at the

meeting, among them Leopold von Buch, who could hardly contain his

indignation, mingled with contempt, for what seemed to him the view

of a youthful and inexperienced observer. One would have liked to

hear the discussion which followed, in special section, between Von

Buch, Charpentier, and Agassiz. Elie de Beaumont, who should have

made the fourth, did not arrive till later. Difference of opinion,

however, never disturbed the cordial relation which existed between

Von Buch and his young opponent. Indeed, Agassiz's reverence and

admiration for Von Buch was then, and continued throughout his

life, deep and loyal.

Not alone from the men who had made these subjects their special

study, did Agassiz meet with discouragements. The letters of his

beloved mentor, Humboldt, in 1837, show how much he regretted that

any part of his young friend's energy should be diverted from

zoology, to a field of investigation which he then believed to be

one of theory rather than of precise demonstration. He was,

perhaps, partly influenced by the fact that he saw through the

prejudiced eyes of his friend Von Buch. "Over your and

Charpentier's moraines," he says, in one of his letters, "Leopold

von Buch rages, as you may already know, considering the subject,

as he does, his exclusive property. But I too, though by no means

so bitterly opposed to new views, and ready to believe that the

boulders have not all been moved by the same means, am yet inclined

to think the moraines due to more local causes."

The next letter shows that Humboldt was seriously anxious lest this

new field of activity, with its fascinating speculations, should

draw Agassiz away from his ichthyological researches.

HUMBOLDT TO AGASSIZ.

BERLIN, December 2, 1837.

I have this moment received, my dear friend, by the hand of M. de

Werther, the cabinet minister, your eighth and ninth numbers, with

a fine pamphlet of text. I hasten to express my warm thanks, and I

congratulate the public on your somewhat tardy resolution to give a

larger proportion of text. One should flatter neither the king, nor

the people, nor one's dearest friend. I maintain, therefore, that

no one has told you forcibly enough how the very persons who justly

admire your work, constantly complain of this fragmentary style of

publication, which is the despair of those who have not the leisure

to place your scattered sheets where they belong and disentangle

the skein.* (* Owing to the irregularity with which he received and

was forced to work up his material, Agassiz was often either in

advance or in arrears with certain parts of his subject, so that

his plates and his text did not keep pace with each other, thus

causing his readers much annoyance.)

I think you would do well to publish for a while more text than

plates. You could do this the better because your text is

excellent, full of new and important ideas, expressed with

admirable clearness. The charming letter (again without a date)

which preceded your package impressed me painfully. I see you are

ill again; you complain of congestion of the head and eyes. For

mercy's sake take care of your health which is so dear to us. I am

afraid you work too much, and (shall I say it frankly?) that you

spread your intellect over too many subjects at once. I think that

you should concentrate your moral and also your pecuniary strength

upon this beautiful work on fossil fishes. In so doing you will

render a greater service to positive geology, than by these general

considerations (a little icy withal) on the revolutions of the

primitive world; considerations which, as you well know, convince

only those who give them birth. In accepting considerable sums from

England, you have, so to speak, contracted obligations to be met

only by completing a work which will be at once a monument to your

own glory and a landmark in the history of science. Admirable and

exact as your researches on other fossils are, your contemporaries

claim from you the fishes above all. You will say that this is

making you the slave of others; perfectly true, but such is the

pleasing position of affairs here below. Have I not been driven for

thirty-three years to busy myself with that tiresome America, and

am I not, even yet, daily insulted because, after publishing

thirty-two volumes of the great edition in folio and in quarto, and

twelve hundred plates, one volume of the historical section is

wanting? We men of letters are the servants of an arbitrary master,

whom we have imprudently chosen, who flatters and pets us first,

and then tyrannizes over us if we do not work to his liking. You

see, my dear friend, I play the grumbling old man, and, at the risk

of deeply displeasing you, place myself on the side of the despotic

public. . .

With reference to the general or periodical lowering of the

temperature of the globe, I have never thought it necessary, on

account of the elephant of the Lena, to admit that sudden frost of

which Cuvier used to speak. What I have seen in Siberia, and what

has been observed in Captain Beechey's expedition on the northwest

coast of America, simply proves that there exists a layer of frozen

drift, in the fissures of which (even now) the muscular flesh of

any animal which should accidentally fall into them would be

preserved intact. It is a slight local phenomenon. To me, the

ensemble of geological phenomena seems to prove, not the prevalence

of this glacial surface on which you would carry along your

boulders, but a very high temperature spreading almost to the

poles, a temperature favorable to organizations resembling those

now living in the tropics. Your ice frightens me, and gladly as I

would welcome you here, my dear friend, I think, perhaps, for the

sake of your health, and also that you may not see this country,

always so hideous, under a sheet of snow and ice (in February), you

would do better to come two months later, with the first verdure.

This is suggested by a letter received yesterday by M. d'O--, which

alarmed me a little, because the state of your eyes obliged you to

write by another hand. Pray do not think of traveling before you

are quite well. I close this letter, feeling sure that it does not

contain a line which is not an expression of friendship and of the

high esteem I bear you. The magnificence of your last numbers,

eight and nine, cannot be told. How admirably executed are your

Macropoma, the Ophiopris procerus, Mantell's great beast, the

minute details of the Dercetis, Psammodus,. . .the skeletons. . .

There is nothing like it in all that we possess upon vertebrates. I

have also begun to study your text, so rich in well arranged facts;

the monograph of the Lepidostei, the passage upon the bony rays,

and, dear Agassiz, I could hardly believe my eyes, sixty-five

continuous pages of the third volume, without interruption! You

will spoil the public. But, my good friend, you have already

information upon a thousand species; "claudite jam rivos!" You say

your work can go on if you have two hundred subscribers; but if you

continue to support two traveling draughtsmen, I predict, as a

practical man, that it cannot go on. You cannot even publish what

you have gathered in the last five years. Consider that in

attempting to give a review of all the fossil fishes which now

exist in collections, you pursue a phantom which ever flies before

you. Such a work would not be finished in less than fifteen years,

and besides, this NOW is an uncertain element. Cannot you conquer

yourself so far as to finish what you have in your possession at

present? Recall your artists. With the reputation you enjoy in

Europe, whatever might essentially change your opinion on certain

organisms would willingly be sent to you. If you continue to keep

two ambassadors in foreign lands, the means you destine for the

engraving and printing will soon be absorbed. You will struggle

with domestic difficulties, and at sixty years of age (tremble at

the sight of this number!) you will be as uncertain as you are

to-day, whether you possess, even in your collection of drawings,

all that is to be found among amateurs. How exhaust an ocean in

which the species are indefinitely increasing? Finish, first, what

you have this December, 1837, and then, if the subject does not

weary you, publish the supplements in 1847. You must not forget

that these supplements will be of two kinds: 1st. Ideas which

modify some of your old views. 2nd. New species. Only the first

kind of supplement would be really desirable. Furthermore, you must

regain your intellectual independence and not let yourself be

scolded any more by M. de Humboldt. Little will it avail you should

I vanish from the scene of this world with your fourteenth number!

When I am a fossil in my turn I shall still appear to you as a

ghost, having under my arm the pages you have failed to interpolate

and the volume of that eternal America which I owe to the public. I

close with a touch of fun, in order that my letter may seem a

little less like preaching. A thousand affectionate remembrances.

No more ice, not much of echinoderms, plenty of fish, recall of

ambassadors in partibus, and great severity toward the

book-sellers, an infernal race, two or three of whom have been

killed under me.

A. DE HUMBOLDT.

I sigh to think of the trouble my horrible writing will give you.

A letter of about the same date from Von Buch shows that, however

he might storm at Agassiz's heterodox geology, he was in full

sympathy with his work in general.

LEOPOLD VON BUCH TO LOUIS AGASSIZ.

December 22, 1837.

. . .Pray reinstate me in the good graces of my unknown benefactor

among you. By a great mistake the reports of the Society forwarded

to me from Neuchatel have been sent back. As it is well known at

the post-office that I do not keep the piles of educational

journals sent to me from France, the postage on them being much too

heavy for my means, they took it for granted that this journal, the

charges on which amounted to several crowns, was of the number. I

am very sorry. I do not even know the contents of the journal, but

I suppose it contained papers of yours, full of genius and ardor. I

like your way of looking at nature, and I think you render great

service to science by your observations. A right spirit will

readily lead you to see that this is the true road to glory, far

preferable to the one which leads to vain analogies and

speculations, the time for which is long past. I am grieved to hear

that you are not well, and that your eyes refuse their service. M.

de Humboldt tells me that you are seeking a better climate here, in

the month of February. You may find it, perhaps, thanks to our

stoves. But as we shall still have plenty of ice in the streets,

your glacial opinions will not find a market at that season. I

should like to present you with a memoir or monograph of mine, just

published, on Spirifer and Orthis, but I will take good care to let

no one pay postage on a work which, by its nature, can have but a

very limited interest. . .I will await your arrival to give you

these descriptions. I am expecting the numbers of your Fossil

Fishes, which have not yet come. Humboldt often speaks of them to

me. Ah! how much I prefer you in a field which is wholly your own

than in one where you break in upon the measured and cautious

tread, introduced by Saussure in geology. You, too, will reconsider

all this, and will yet treat the views of Saussure and Escher with

more respect. Everything here turns to infusoria. Ehrenberg has

just discovered that an apparently sandy deposit, twenty feet in

thickness, under the "Luneburgerheyde," is composed entirely of

infusoria of a kind still living in the neighborhood of Berlin.

This layer rests upon a brown deposit known to be ten feet in

thickness. The latter consists, for one fifth of the depth, of pine

pollen, which burns. The rest is of infusoria. Thus these animals,

which the naked eye has not power to discern, have themselves the

power to build up mountain chains. . .

CHAPTER 9.

1837-1839: AGE 30-32.

Invitation to Professorships at Geneva and Lausanne.

Death of his Father.

Establishment of Lithographic Press at Neuchatel.

Researches upon Structure of Mollusks.

Internal Casts of Shells.

Glacial Explorations.

Views of Buckland.

Relations with Arnold Guyot.

Their Work together in the Alps.

Letter to Sir Philip Egerton concerning Glacial Work.

Summer of 1839.

Publication of "Etudes sur les Glaciers."

Although Agassiz's daring treatment of the glacial phenomena had

excited much opposition and angry comment, it had also made a

powerful impression by its eloquence and originality. To this may

be partly due the fact that about this time he was strongly urged

from various quarters to leave Neuchatel for some larger field. One

of the most seductive of these invitations, owing to the

affectionate spirit in which it was offered, came through Monsieur

de la Rive, in Geneva.

M. AUGUSTE DE LA RIVE TO LOUIS AGASSIZ.

GENEVA, May 12, 1836.

. . .I have not yet received your address. I hope you will send it

to me without delay, for I am anxious to bring it before our

readers. I hope also that you will not forget what you have

promised me for the "Bibliotheque Universelle." I am exceedingly

anxious to have your cooperation; the more so that it will

reinforce that of several distinguished savants whose assistance I

have recently secured.

If I weary you with a second letter, however, it is not only to

remind you of your promise about the "Bibliotheque Universelle,"

but for another object still more important and urgent. The matter

stands thus. Our academic courses have just opened under favorable

auspices. The number of students is much increased, and,

especially, we have a good many from Germany and England. This

circumstance makes us feel more strongly the importance of

completing our organization, and of doing this wisely and quickly.

I will not play the diplomat with you, but will frankly say,

without circumlocution, that you seem to me the one essential, the

one indispensable man. After having talked with some influential

persons here, I feel sure that if you say to me, "I will come," I

can obtain for you the following conditions: 1st. A regular salary

of three thousand francs, beside the student fees, which, in view

of the character of your instruction, your reputation, and the

novelty of your course, I place too low at a thousand francs; of

this I am convinced. 2nd. The vacant professorship is one of

geology and mineralogy, but should you wish it De la Planche will

continue to teach the mineralogy, and you will replace it by

paleontology, or any other subject which may suit you. . .Add to

this resource that of a popular course for the world outside,

ladies and others, which you might give in the winter, as at

Neuchatel. The custom here is to pay fifty francs for the course of

from twenty-five to thirty lectures. You will easily see that for

such a course you would have at least as large an audience here as

at Neuchatel. This is the more likely because there is a demand for

these courses, Pictet being dead, and M. Rossi and M. de Castella

having ceased to give them. No one has come forward as their heir,

fine as the inheritance is; some are too busy, others have not the

kind of talent needed, and none have attempted to replace these

gentlemen in this especial line, one in which you excel, both by

your gifts and your fortunate choice of a subject more in vogue

just now than any other. Come then, to work in this rich vein

before others present themselves for the same purpose. Finally,

since I must make up your budget, the "Bibliotheque Universelle,"

which pays fifty francs a sheet, would be always open to you; there

you could bring the fruits of your productive leisure. Certainly it

would be easy for you to make in this way an additional thousand

francs.

Here, then, is a statement, precise and full, of the condition of

things, and of what you may hope to find here. The moment is

propitious; there is a movement among us just now in favor of the

sciences, and this winter the plan of a large building for our

museum and library will be presented to our common council. The

work should begin next summer; you well know how much we should

value your ideas and your advice on this subject. There may also be

question of a director for the museum, and of an apartment for him

in the new edifice; you will not doubt to whom such a place would

be offered. But let us not draw upon the future; let us limit

ourselves to the present, and see whether what I propose suits you

. . .Come! let yourself be persuaded. Sacrifice the capital to a

provincial town. At Berlin, no doubt, you would be happy and

honored; at Geneva, you would be the happiest, the most honored.

Look at--, who shone as a star of the first magnitude at Geneva,

and who is but a star of second or third rank in Paris. This, to be

sure, would not be your case; nevertheless, I am satisfied that at

Geneva, where you would be a second de Saussure, your position

would be still more brilliant. I know that these motives of

scientific self-love have little weight with you; nevertheless,

wishing to omit nothing, I give them for what they are worth. But

my hope rests far more on the arguments I have first presented;

they come from the heart, and with you the heart responds as

readily as the genius. But enough! I will not fatigue you with

farther considerations. I think I have given you all the points

necessary for your decision. Be so kind as to let me know as soon

as possible what you intend to do. Have the kindness also not to

speak of the contents of this letter, and remember that it is not

the Rector of the Academy of Geneva, but the Professor Auguste de

la Rive, who writes in his own private person. Promptitude and

silence, then, are the two recommendations which I make to you

while we await the Yes we so greatly desire. . .

More tempting still must have been the official invitation received

a few months later to a professorship at Lausanne, strengthened as

it was by the affectionate entreaties of relations and friends,

urging him for the sake of family ties and patriotism to return to

the canton where he had passed his earlier years. But he had cast

in his lot with the Neuchatelois and was proof against all

arguments. He remained faithful to the post he had chosen until he

left it, temporarily as he then believed, to come to America. The

citizens of his adopted town expressed their appreciation of his

loyalty to them in a warm letter of thanks, begging, at the same

time, his acceptance of the sum of six thousand francs, payable by

installments during three years.

The summer of 1837 was a sad one to Agassiz and to his whole

family; his father died at Concise, carried off by a fever while

still a comparatively young man. The pretty parsonage, to which

they were so much attached, passed into other hands, and

thenceforward the home of Madame Agassiz was with her children,

among whom she divided her time.

In 1838 Agassiz founded a lithographic printing establishment in

Neuchatel, which was carried on for many years under his direction.

Thus far his plates had been lithographed in Munich. Their

execution at such a distance involved constant annoyance, and

sometimes great waste of time and money, in sending the proofs to

and fro for correction. The scheme of establishing a lithographic

press, to be in a great degree at his charge, was certainly an

imprudent one for a poor man; but Agassiz hoped not only to

facilitate his own publications by this means, but also to raise

the standard of execution in works of a purely scientific

character. Supported partly by his own exertions, partly by the

generosity of others, the establishment was almost exclusively

dependent upon him for its unceasing activity. He was fortunate in

securing for its head M. Hercule Nicolet, a very able lithographic

artist, who had had much experience in engraving objects of natural

history, and was specially versed in the recently invented art of

chromatic lithography.

Agassiz was now driving all his steeds abreast. Beside his duties

as professor, he was printing at the same time his "Fossil Fishes,"

his "Fresh-Water Fishes," and his investigations on fossil

Echinoderms and Mollusks,--the illustrations for all these various

works being under his daily supervision. The execution of these

plates, under M. Nicolet's care, was admirable for the period.

Professor Arnold Guyot, in his memoir of Agassiz, says of the

plates for the "Fresh-Water Fishes": "We wonder at their beauty,

and at their perfection of color and outline, when we remember that

they were almost the first essays of the newly-invented art of

lithochromy, produced at a time when France and Belgium were

showering rewards on very inferior work of the kind, as the

foremost specimens of progress in the art."

All this work could hardly be carried on single handed. In 1837 M.

Edouard Desor joined Agassiz in Neuchatel, and became for many

years his intimate associate in scientific labors. A year or two

later M. Charles Vogt also united himself to the band of

investigators and artists who had clustered about Agassiz as their

central force. M. Ernest Favre says of this period of his life: "He

displayed during these years an incredible energy, of which the

history of science offers, perhaps, no other example."

Among his most important zoological researches at this time were

those upon mollusks. His method of studying this class was too

original and too characteristic to be passed by without notice. The

science of conchology had heretofore been based almost wholly upon

the study of the empty shells. To Agassiz this seemed superficial.

Longing to know more of the relation between the animal and its

outer covering, he bethought himself that the inner moulding of the

shell would give at least the form of its old inhabitant. For the

practical work he engaged an admirable moulder, M. Stahl, who

continued to be one of his staff at the lithographic establishment

until he became permanently employed at the Jardin des Plantes.

With his help and that of M. Henri Ladame, professor of physics and

chemistry at Neuchatel, who prepared the delicate metal alloys in

which the first mould was taken, Agassiz obtained casts in which

the form of the animals belonging to the shells was perfectly

reproduced. This method has since passed into universal use. By its

aid he obtained a new means of ascertaining the relations between

fossil and living mollusks. It was of vast service to him in

preparing his "Etudes critiques sur les Mollusques fossiles,"--a

quarto volume with nearly one hundred plates.

The following letter to Sir Philip Egerton gives some account of

his undertakings at this time, and of the difficulties entailed

upon him by their number and variety.

LOUIS AGASSIZ TO SIR PHILIP EGERTON.

NEUCHATEL, August 10, 1838.

. . .These last months have been a time of trial to me, and I have

been forced to give up my correspondence completely in order to

meet the ever-increasing demands of my work. You know how difficult

it is to find a quiet moment and an easy mind for writing, when one

is pursued by printing or lithographic proofs, and forced besides

to prepare unceasing occupation for numerous employees. Add to this

the close research required by the work of editing, and you surely

will find an excuse for my delay. I think I have already written

you that in order to have everything under my own eye, I had

founded a lithographic establishment at Neuchatel in the hope of

avoiding in future the procrastinations to which my proofs were

liable when the work was done at Munich. . .I hope that my new

publications will be sufficiently well received to justify me in

supporting an establishment unique of its kind, which I have

founded solely in the interest of science and at the risk of my

peace and my health. If I give you all these details, it is simply

to explain my silence, which was caused not by pure negligence, but

by the demands of an undertaking in the success of which my very

existence is involved. . .This week I shall forward to the

Secretary of the British Association for the Advancement of Science

all that I have been able to do thus far, being unable to bring it

myself, as I had hoped. You would oblige me greatly if you would

give a look at these different works, which may, I hope, have

various claims on your interest. First, there is the tenth number

of the "Fossil Fishes," though the whole supply of publisher's

copies will only be sent a few weeks later. Then there are the

seven first plates of my sea-urchins, engraved with much care and

with many details. A third series of plates relates to critical

studies on fossil mollusks, little or erroneously known, and on

their internal casts. This is a quite novel side of the study of

shells, and will throw light on the organization of animals known

hitherto only by the shell. I have made a plaster collection of

them for the Geological Society. They have been packed some time,

but my late journey to Paris has prevented me from forwarding them

till now. As soon as I have a moment, I shall make out the

catalogue and send it on. When you go to London, do not fail to

examine them; the result is curious enough. Finally, the plates for

the first number of my "Fresh-Water Fishes" are in great part

finished, and also included in my package for Newcastle. . .The

plates are executed by a new process, and printed in various tints

on different stones, resulting in a remarkable uniformity of

coloring in all the impressions. . .

Such are the new credentials with which I present myself, as I

bring my thanks for the honor paid to me by my nomination for the

vacancy in the Royal Society of London. If unbounded devotion to

the interests of science constituted a sufficient title to such a

distinction, I should be the less surprised at the announcement

contained in your last letter. The action of the Royal Society, so

flattering to the candidate of your choice, has satisfied a desire

which I should hardly have dared to form for many a year,--that of

becoming a member of a body so illustrious as the Royal Society of

London. . .

Each time I write I wish I could close with the hope of seeing you

soon; but I must work incessantly; that is my lot, and the

happiness I find in it gives a charm to my occupations however

numerous they may be. . .

While Agassiz's various zoological works were thus pressed with

unceasing activity, the glaciers and their attendant phenomena,

which had so captivated his imagination, were ever present to his

thought. In August of the year 1838, a year after he had announced

at the meeting of the Helvetic Society his comprehensive theory

respecting the action of ice over the whole northern hemisphere, he

made two important excursions in the Alps. The first was to the

valley of Hassli, the second to the glaciers of Mont Blanc. In both

he was accompanied by his scientific collaborator, M. Desor, whose

intrepidity and ardor hardly fell short of his own; by Mr. Dinkel

as artist, and by one or two students and friends. These excursions

were a kind of prelude to his more prolonged sojourns on the Alps,

and to the series of observations carried on by him and his

companions, which attracted so much attention in later years. But

though Agassiz carried with him, on these first explorations, only

the simplest means of investigation and experiment, they were no

amateur excursions. On these first Alpine journeys he had in his

mind the sketch he meant to fill out. The significance of the

phenomena was already clear to him. What he sought was the

connection. Following the same comparative method, he intended to

track the footsteps of the ice as he had gathered and put together

the fragments of his fossil fishes, till the scattered facts should

fall into their natural order once more and tell their story from

beginning to end.

In his explorations of 1838 he found everywhere the same phenomena;

the grooved and polished and graven surfaces and the rounded and

modeled rocks, often lying far above and beyond the present limits

of the glaciers; the old moraines, long deserted by the ice, but

defining its ancient frontiers; the erratic blocks, transported far

from their place of origin and disposed in an order and position

unexplained by the agency of water.

These excursions, though not without their dangers and fatigues,

were full of charm for men who, however serious their aims, were

still young enough to enter like boys into the spirit of adventure.

Agassiz himself was but thirty-one; an ardent pedestrian, he

delighted in feats of walking and climbing. His friend Dinkel

relates that one day, while pausing at Grindelwald for refreshment,

they met an elderly traveler who asked him, after listening awhile

to their gay talk, in which appeals were constantly made to

"Agassiz," if that was perhaps the son of the celebrated professor

of Neuchatel. The answer amazed him; he could hardly believe that

the young man before him was the naturalist of European reputation.

In connection with this journey occurs the first attempt at an

English letter found among Agassiz's papers. It is addressed to

Buckland, and contains this passage: "Since I saw the glaciers I am

quite of a snowy humor, and will have the whole surface of the

earth covered with ice, and the whole prior creation dead by cold.

In fact, I am quite satisfied that ice must be taken [included] in

every complete explanation of the last changes which occurred at

the surface of Europe." Considered in connection with their

subsequent work together in the ancient ice-beds and moraines of

England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales, it is curious to find

Buckland answering: "I am sorry that I cannot entirely adopt the

new theory you advocate to explain transported blocks by moraines;

for supposing it adequate to explain the phenomena of Switzerland,

it would not apply to the granite blocks and transported gravel of

England, which I can only explain by referring to currents of

water." During the same summer Mrs. Buckland writes from

Interlaken, in the course of a journey in Switzerland with her

husband. . ."We have made a good tour of the Oberland and have seen

glaciers, etc., but Dr. Buckland is as far as ever from agreeing

with you." We shall see hereafter how completely he became a

convert to Agassiz's glacial theory in its widest acceptation.

One friend, scarcely mentioned thus far in this biography, was yet,

from the beginning, the close associate of Agassiz's glacier work.

Arnold Guyot and he had been friends from boyhood. Their university

life separated them for a time, Guyot being at Berlin while Agassiz

was at Munich, and they became colleagues at Neuchatel only after

Agassiz had been for some years established there. From that time

forward there was hardly any break in their intercourse; they came

to America at about the same time, and finally settled as

professors, the one at Harvard College, in Cambridge,

Massachusetts, and the other at the College of New Jersey, in

Princeton. They shared all their scientific interests; and when

they were both old men, Guyot brought to Agassiz's final

undertaking, the establishment of a summer school at Penikese, a

cooperation as active and affectionate as that he had given in his

youth to his friend's scheme for establishing a permanent

scientific summer station in the high Alps.

In a short visit made by Agassiz to Paris in the spring of 1838 he

unfolded his whole plan to Guyot, then residing there, and

persuaded him to undertake a certain part of the investigation.

During this very summer of 1838, therefore, while Agassiz was

tracing the ancient limits of the ice in the Bernese Oberland and

the Haut Valais, and later, in the valley of Chamounix, Guyot was

studying the structure and movement of the ice during a six weeks'

tour in the central Alps. At the conclusion of their respective

journeys they met to compare notes, at the session of the

Geological Society of France, at Porrentruy, where Agassiz made a

report upon the general results of his summer's work; while Guyot

read a paper, the contents of which have never been fully

published, upon the movement of glaciers and upon their internal

features, including the laminated structure of the ice, the

so-called blue bands, deep down in the mass of the glacier.* (* See

"Memoir of Louis Agassiz" by Arnold Guyot, written for the United

States National Academy of Sciences, page 38.) In the succeeding

years of their glacial researches together, Guyot took for his

share the more special geological problems, the distribution of

erratic boulders and of the glacial drift, as connected with the

ancient extension of the glaciers. This led him away from the

central station of observation to remoter valleys on the northern

and southern slopes of the Alps, where he followed the descent of

the glacial phenomena to the plains of central Europe on the one

side and to those of northern Italy on the other. We therefore

seldom hear of him with the band of workers who finally settled on

the glacier of the Aar, because his share of the undertaking became

a more isolated one. It was nevertheless an integral part of the

original scheme, which was carried on connectedly to the end, the

results of the work in the different departments being constantly

reported and compared. So much was this the case, that the

intention of Agassiz had been to embody the whole in a publication,

the first part of which should contain the glacial system of

Agassiz; the second the Alpine erratics, by Guyot; while the third

and final portion, by E. Desor, should treat of the erratic

phenomena outside of Switzerland. The first volume alone was

completed. Unlooked for circumstances made the continuation of the

work impossible, and the five thousand specimens of the erratic

rocks of Switzerland collected by Professor Guyot, in preparation

for his part of the publication, are now deposited in the College

of New Jersey, at Princeton.

In the following summer of 1839 Agassiz took the chain of Monte

Rosa and Matterhorn as the field of a larger and more systematic

observation. On this occasion, the usual party consisting of

Agassiz, Desor, M. Bettanier, an artist, and two or three other

friends, was joined by the geologist Studer. Up to this time he had

been a powerful opponent of Agassiz's views, and his conversion to

the glacial theory during this excursion was looked upon by them

all as a victory greater than any gained over the regions of ice

and snow. Some account of this journey occurs in the following

letter.

LOUIS AGASSIZ TO SIR PHILIP EGERTON.

NEUCHATEL, September 10, 1839.

. . .Under these circumstances, I thought I could not do better

than to pass some weeks in the solitude of the high Alps; I lived

about a fortnight in the region of the glaciers, ascending some new

field of ice every day, and trying to scale the sides of our

highest peaks. I thus examined in succession all the glaciers

descending from the majestic summits of Monte Rosa and the

Matterhorn, whose numerous crests form a most gigantic

amphitheatre, which lifts itself above the everlasting snow.

Afterward I visited the sea of ice which, under the name of the

glacier of Aletsch, flows from the Jungfrau, the Monch, and the

Eiger toward Brieg; thence I went to the glacier of the Rhone, and

from there, establishing my headquarters at the Hospice of the

Grimsel, I followed the glacier of the Aar to the foot of the

Finsteraarhorn. There I ascertained the most important fact that I

now know concerning the advance of glaciers, namely, that the cabin

constructed by Hugi in 1827, at the foot of the Abschwung, is now

four thousand feet lower down. Slight as is the inclination of the

glacier, this cabin has been carried on by the ice with astonishing

rapidity, and still more important is it that this rapidity has

been on the increase; for in 1830 the cabin was only some hundred

feet from the rock, in 1836 it had already passed over a distance

from [word torn away] of two thousand feet, and in the last three

years it has again doubled that distance. Not only have I confirmed

my views upon glaciers and their attendant phenomena, on this new

ground, but I have completed my examination of a number of details,

and have had besides the satisfaction of convincing one of my most

severe opponents of the exactness of my observations, namely, M.

Studer, who accompanied me on a part of these excursions. . .

The winter of 1840 was fully occupied by the preparation for the

publication of the "Etudes sur les Glaciers," which appeared before

the year was out, accompanied by an atlas of thirty-two plates. The

volume of text consisted of an historical resume of all that had

previously been done in the study of glaciers, followed by an

account of the observations of Agassiz and his companions during

the last three or four years upon the glaciers of the Alps. Their

structure, external aspect, needles, tables, perched blocks, gravel

cones, rifts, and crevasses, as well as their movements, mode of

formation, and internal temperature, were treated in succession.

But the most interesting chapters, from the author's own point of

view, and those which were most novel for his readers, were the

concluding ones upon the ancient extension of the Swiss glaciers,

and upon the former existence of an immense, unbroken sheet of ice,

which had once covered the whole northern hemisphere. No one before

had drawn such vast conclusions from the local phenomena of the

Alpine valleys. "The surface of Europe," says Agassiz, "adorned

before by a tropical vegetation and inhabited by troops of large

elephants, enormous hippopotami, and gigantic carnivora, was

suddenly buried under a vast mantle of ice, covering alike plains,

lakes, seas and plateaus. Upon the life and movement of a powerful

creation fell the silence of death. Springs paused, rivers ceased

to flow, the rays of the sun, rising upon this frozen shore (if,

indeed, it was reached by them), were met only by the breath of the

winter from the north and the thunders of the crevasses as they

opened across the surface of this icy sea."* (* "Etudes sur les

Glaciers" Chapter 8 page 35.) The author goes on to state that on

the breaking up of this universal shroud the ice must have lingered

longest in mountainous strongholds, and that all these fastnesses

of retreat became, as the Alps are now, centres of distribution for

the broken debris and rocky fragments which are found scattered

with a kind of regularity along certain lines, and over given areas

in northern and central Europe. How he followed out this idea in

his subsequent investigations will be seen hereafter.

CHAPTER 10.

1840-1842: AGE 33-35.

Summer Station on the Glacier of the Aar.

Hotel des Neuchatelois.

Members of the Party.

Work on the Glacier.

Ascent of the Strahleck and the Siedelhorn.

Visit to England.

Search for Glacial Remains in Great Britain.

Roads of Glen Roy.

Views of English Naturalists concerning Agassiz's Glacial Theory.

Letter from Humboldt.

Winter Visit to Glacier.

Summer of 1841 on the Glacier.

Descent into the Glacier.

Ascent of the Jungfrau.

In the summer of 1840 Agassiz made his first permanent station on

the Alps. Hitherto the external phenomena, the relation of the ice

to its surroundings, and its influence upon them, had been the

chief study. Now the glacier itself was to be the main subject of

investigation, and he took with him a variety of instruments for

testing temperatures: barometers, thermometers, hygrometers, and

psychometers; beside a boring apparatus, by means of which

self-registering thermometers might be lowered into the heart of

the glacier. To these were added microscopes for the study of such

insects and plants as might be found in these ice-bound regions.

The Hospice of the Grimsel was selected as his base of supplies,

and as guides Jacob Leuthold and Johann Wahren were chosen. Both of

these had accompanied Hugi in his ascension of the Finsteraarhorn

in 1828, and both were therefore thoroughly familiar with all the

dangers of Alpine climbing. The lower Aar glacier was to be the

scene of their continuous work, and the centre from which their

ascents of the neighboring summits would be made. Here, on the

great median moraine, stood a huge boulder of micaceous schist. Its

upper surface projected so as to form a roof, and by closing it in

on one side with a stone wall, leveling the floor by a judicious

arrangement of flat slabs, and rigging a blanket in front to serve

as a curtain across the entrance, the whole was presently

transformed into a rude hut, where six persons could find

sleeping-room. A recess, sheltered by the rock outside, served as

kitchen and dining-room; while an empty space under another large

boulder was utilized as a cellar for the keeping of provisions.

This was the abode so well known afterward as the Hotel des

Neuchatelois. Its first occupants were Louis Agassiz, Edouard

Desor, Charles Vogt, Francois de Pourtales, Celestin Nicolet, and

Henri Coulon. It afforded, perhaps, as good a shelter as they could

have found in the old cabin of Hugi, where they had hoped to make

their temporary home. In this they were disappointed, for the cabin

had crumbled on its last glacial journey. The wreck was lying two

hundred feet below the spot where they had seen the walls still

standing the year before.

The work was at once distributed among the different members of the

party,--Agassiz himself, assisted by his young friend and favorite

pupil, Francois de Pourtales, retaining for his own share the

meteorological observations, and especially those upon the internal

temperature of the glaciers.* (* See "Tables of Temperature,

Measurements" etc., in Agassiz's "Systeme Glaciaire". These results

are also recorded in a volume entitled "Sejours dans les Glaciers",

by Edouard Desor, a collection of very bright and entertaining

articles upon the excursions and sojourns made in the Alps, during

successive summers, by Agassiz and his scientific staff.) To M.

Vogt fell the microscopic study of the red snow and the organic

life contained in it; to M. Nicolet, the flora of the glaciers and

the surrounding rocks; to M. Desor, the glacial phenomena proper,

including those of the moraines. He had the companionship and

assistance of M. Henri Coulon in the long and laborious excursions

required for this part of the work.

This is not the place for scientific details. For the results of

Agassiz's researches on the Alpine glaciers, to which he devoted

much of his time and energy during ten years, from 1836 to 1846,

the reader is referred to his two larger works on this subject, the

"Etudes sur les Glaciers," and the "Systeme Glaciaire." Of the work

accomplished by him and his companions during these years this

slight summary is given by his friend Guyot.* (* See Biographical

Sketch, published by Professor A. Guyot, under the auspices of the

United States National Academy.) "The position of eighteen of the

most prominent rocks on the glacier was determined by careful

triangulation by a skillful engineer, and measured year after year

to establish the rate of motion of every part. The differences in

the rate of motion in the upper and lower part of the glacier, as

well as in different seasons of the year, was ascertained; the

amount of the annual melting was computed, and all the phenomena

connected with it studied. All the surrounding peaks,--the

Jungfrau, the Schreckhorn, the Finsteraarhorn, most of them until

then reputed unscalable,--were ascended, and the limit of glacial

action discovered; in short all the physical laws of the glacier

were brought to light."

We now return to the personal narrative. After a number of days

spent in the study of the local phenomena, the band of workers

turned their attention to the second part of their programme,

namely, the ascent of the Strahleck, by crossing which and

descending on the other side, they intended to reach Grindelwald.

One morning, then, toward the end of August, their guides,

according to agreement, aroused them at three o'clock,--an hour

earlier than their usual roll-call. The first glance outside spread

a general chill of disappointment over the party, for they found

themselves beleaguered by a wall of fog on every side. But

Leuthold, as he lighted the fire and prepared breakfast, bade them

not despair,--the sun might make all right. In a few moments, one

by one, the summits of the Schreckhorn, the Finsteraarhorn, the

Oberaarhorn, the Altmaner, the Scheuchzerhorn, lighted by the first

rays of the sun, came out like islands above the ocean of mist,

which softly broke away and vanished with the advancing light. In

about three hours they reached the base of the Strahleck. Their two

guides, Leuthold and Wahren, had engaged three additional men for

this excursion, so that they now had five guides, none of whom were

superfluous, since they carried with them various barometric

instruments which required careful handling. They began the ascent

in single file, but the slopes soon became so steep and the light

snow (in which they floundered to the knees at every step) so deep,

that the guides resorted to the usual method in such cases of tying

them all together. The two head guides alone, Leuthold and Wahren,

remained detached, clearing the snow in front of them, cutting

steps in the ice, and giving warning, by cry and gesture, of any

hidden danger in the path. At nine o'clock, after an hour's

climbing, they stepped upon the small plateau, evenly covered with

unbroken snow, formed by the summit of the Strahleck.

The day had proved magnificent. With a clear sky above them, they

looked down upon the valley of Grindelwald at their feet, while

around and below them gathered the Scheideck and the Faulhorn, the

pyramidal outline of the Niesen, and the chain of the Stockhorn. In

front lay the great masses of the Eiger and the Monch, while to the

southwest the Jungfrau rose above the long chain of the

Viescherhorner. The first pause of silent wonder and delight, while

they released themselves from their cords and arranged their

instruments, seems to have been succeeded by an outburst of

spirits; for in the journal of the youngest of the party, Francois

de Pourtales, then a lad of seventeen, we read: "The guides began

to wrestle and we to dance, when suddenly we saw a female chamois,

followed by her young, ascending a neighboring slope, and presently

four or five more stretched their necks over a rock, as if to see

what was going on. Breathless the wrestlers and the dancers paused,

fearing to disturb by the slightest movement creatures so shy of

human approach. They drew nearer until within easy gunshot

distance, and then galloping along the opposite ridge disappeared

over the summit."

The party passed more than an hour on the top of the Strahleck,

making observations and taking measurements. Then having rested and

broken their fast with such provisions as they had brought, they

prepared for a descent, which proved the more rapid, since much of

it was a long slide. Tied together once more, they slid, wherever

they found it possible to exchange the painful and difficult

walking for this simpler process. "Once below these slopes of

snow," says the journal of young de Pourtales again, "rocks almost

vertical, or narrow ledges covered with grass, served us as a road

and brought us to the glacier of the Grindelwald. To reach the

glacier itself we traversed a crevasse of great depth, and some

twenty feet wide; on a bridge of ice, one or two feet in width, and

broken toward the end, where we were obliged to spring across. Once

on the glacier the rest was nothing. The race was to the fastest,

and we were soon on the path of the tourists." Reaching the village

of Grindelwald at three o'clock in the afternoon, they found it

difficult to persuade the people at the inn that they had left the

glacier of the Aar that morning. From Grindelwald they returned by

the Scheideck to the Grimsel, visiting on their way the upper

glacier of Grindelwald, the glacier of Schwartzwald, and that of

Rosenlaui, in order to see how far these had advanced since their

last visit to them. After a short rest at the Hospice of the

Grimsel, Agassiz returned with two or three of his companions to

their hut on the Aar glacier for the purpose of driving stakes into

the holes previously bored in the ice. He hoped by means of these

stakes to learn the following year what had been the rate of

movement of the glacier. The summer's work closed with the ascent

of the Siedelhorn. In all these ascents, the utmost pains was taken

to ascertain how far the action of the ice might be traced upon

these mountain peaks and the limits determined at which the

polished surfaces ceased, giving place to the rough, angular rock

which had never been modeled by the ice.

Agassiz had hardly returned from the Alps when he started for

England. He had long believed that the Highlands of Scotland, the

hilly Lake Country of England, and the mountains of Wales and

Ireland, would present the same phenomena as the valleys of the

Alps. Dr. Buckland had offered to be his guide in this search after

glacier tracks, as he had formerly been in the hunt after fossil

fishes in Great Britain. When, therefore, the meeting of the

British Association at Glasgow, at which they were both present,

was over, they started together for the Highlands. In a lecture

delivered by Agassiz, at his summer school at Penikese, a few

months before his death, he recurred to this journey with the

enthusiasm of a young man. Recalling the scientific isolation in

which he then stood, opposed as he was to all the prominent

geologists of the day, he said: "Among the older naturalists, only

one stood by me. Dr. Buckland, Dean of Westminster, who had come to

Switzerland at my urgent request for the express purpose of seeing

my evidence, and who had been fully convinced of the ancient

extension of ice there, consented to accompany me on my glacier

hunt in Great Britain. We went first to the Highlands of Scotland,

and it is one of the delightful recollections of my life that as we

approached the castle of the Duke of Argyll, standing in a valley

not unlike some of the Swiss valleys, I said to Buckland: 'Here we

shall find our first traces of glaciers;' and, as the stage entered

the valley, we actually drove over an ancient terminal moraine,

which spanned the opening of the valley." In short, Agassiz found,

as he had anticipated, that in the mountains of Scotland, Wales,

and the north of England, the valleys were in many instances

traversed by terminal moraines and bordered by lateral ones, as in

Switzerland. Nor were any of the accompanying phenomena wanting.

The characteristic traces left by the ice, as well known to him now

as the track of the game to the hunter; the peculiar lines,

furrows, and grooves; the polished surfaces, the roches moutonnees;

the rocks, whether hard or soft, cut to one level, as by a rigid

instrument; the unstratified drift and the distribution of loose

material in relation to the ancient glacier beds,--all agreed with

what he already knew of glacial action. He visited the famous

"roads of Glen Roy" in the Grampian Hills, where so many geologists

had broken a lance in defense of their theories of subsidence and

upheaval, of ancient ocean-levels and sea-beaches, formed at a time

when they believed Glen Roy and the adjoining valleys to have been

so many fiords and estuaries. To Agassiz, these parallel terraces

explained themselves as the shores of a glacial lake, held back in

its bed for a time by neighboring glaciers descending from more

sheltered valleys. The terraces marked the successively lower

levels at which the water stood, as these barriers yielded, and

allowed its gradual escape.* (* For details, see a paper by Agassiz

on "The Glacial Theory and its Recent Progress" in the "Edinburgh

New Philosophical Journal" October 1842, accompanied by a map of

the Glen Roy region, and also an article entitled "Parallel Roads

of Glen Roy, in Scotland," in the second volume of Agassiz's

"Geological Sketches".) The glacial action in the whole

neighborhood was such as to leave no doubt in the mind of Agassiz

that Glen Roy and the adjoining glens, or valleys, had been the

drainage-bed for the many glaciers formerly occupying the western

ranges of the Grampian Hills. He returned from his tour satisfied

that the mountainous districts of Great Britain had all been

centres of glacial distribution, and that the drift material and

the erratic boulders, scattered over the whole country, were due to

exactly the same causes as the like phenomena in Switzerland. On

the 4th of November, 1840, he read a paper before the Geological

Society of London, giving a summary of the scientific results of

their excursion, followed by one from Dr. Buckland, who had become

an ardent convert to his views. Apropos of this meeting, Dr.

Buckland writes in advance as follows:--

TAYMOUTH CASTLE, October 15, 1840.

. . .Lyell has adopted your theory in toto!!! On my showing him a

beautiful cluster of moraines, within two miles of his father's

house, he instantly accepted it, as solving a host of difficulties

that have all his life embarrassed him. And not these only, but

similar moraines and detritus of moraines, that cover half of the

adjoining counties are explicable on your theory, and he has

consented to my proposal that he should immediately lay them all

down on a map of the county and describe them in a paper to be read

the day after yours at the Geological Society. I propose to give in

my adhesion by reading, the same day with yours, as a sequel to

your paper, a list of localities where I have observed similar

glacial detritus in Scotland, since I left you, and in various

parts of England.

There are great reefs of gravel in the limestone valleys of the

central bog district of Ireland. They have a distinct name, which I

forget. No doubt they are moraines; if you have not, ere you get

this, seen one of them, pray do so.* (* Agassiz was then staying at

Florence Court, the seat of the Earl of Enniskillen, in County

Fermanagh, Ireland. While there he had an opportunity of studying

most interesting glacial phenomena. ) But it will not be worth

while to go out of your way to see more than one; all the rest must

follow as a corollary. I trust you will not fail to be at Edinboro'

on the 20th, and at Sir W. Trevelyan's on the 24th. . .

A letter of later date in the same month shows that Agassiz felt

his views to be slowly gaining ground among his English friends.

LOUIS AGASSIZ TO SIR PHILIP EGERTON.

LONDON, November 24, 1840.

. . .Our meeting on Wednesday passed off very well; none of my

facts were disturbed, though Whewell and Murchison attempted an

opposition; but as their objections were far-fetched, they did not

produce much effect. I was, however, delighted to have some

appearance of serious opposition, because it gave me a chance to

insist upon the exactness of my observations, and upon the want of

solidity in the objections brought against them. Dr. Buckland was

truly eloquent. He has now full possession of this subject; is,

indeed, completely master of it.

I am happy to tell you that everything is definitely arranged with

Lord Francis,* (* Apropos of the sale of his original drawings of

fossil fishes to Lord Francis Egerton.) and that I now feel within

myself a courage which doubles my strength. I have just written to

thank him. To-morrow I shall devote to the fossils sent me by Lord

Enniskillen, a list of which I will forward to you. . .

We append here, a little out of the regular course, a letter from

Humboldt, which shows that he too was beginning to look more

leniently upon Agassiz's glacial conclusions.

HUMBOLDT TO LOUIS AGASSIZ.

BERLIN, August 15, 1840.

I am the most guilty of mortals, my dear friend. There are not

three persons in the world whose remembrance and affection I value

more than yours, or for whom I have a warmer love and admiration,

and yet I allow half the year to pass without giving you a sign of

life, without any expression of my warm gratitude for the

magnificent gifts I owe to you.* (* Probably the plates of the

"Fresh-Water Fishes" and other illustrated publications.)

I am a little like my republican friend who no longer answers any

letters because he does not know where to begin. I receive on an

average fifteen hundred letters a year. I never dictate. I hold

that resort in horror. How dictate a letter to a scholar for whom

one has a real regard? I allow myself to be drawn into answering

the persons I know least, whose wrath is the most menacing. My

nearer friends (and none are more dear to me than yourself) suffer

from my silence. I count with reason upon their indulgence. The

tone of your excellent letters shows that I am right. You spoil me.

Your letters continue to be always warm and affectionate. I receive

few like them. Since two thirds of the letters addressed to me

(partly copies of letters written to the king or the ministers)

remain unanswered, I am blamed, charged with being a parvenu

courtier, an apostate from science. This bitterness of individual

claims does not diminish my ardent desire to be useful. I act

oftener than I answer. I know that I like to do good, and this

consciousness gives me tranquillity in spite of my over burdened

life. You are happy, my dear Agassiz, in the more simple and yet

truly proud position which you have created for yourself. You ought

to take satisfaction in it as the father of a family, as an

illustrious savant, as the originator and source of so many new

ideas, of so many great and noble conceptions.

Your admirable work on the fossil fishes draws to a close. The last

number, so rich in discoveries, and the prospectus, explaining the

true state of this vast publication, have soothed all irritation

regarding it. It is because I am so attached to you that I rejoice

in the calmer atmosphere you have thus established about you. The

approaching completion of the fossil fishes delivers me also from

the fear that a too great ardor might cause you irreparable losses.

You have shown not only what a talent like yours can accomplish,

but also how a noble courage can triumph over seemingly

insurmountable obstacles.

In what words shall I tell you how greatly our admiration is

increased by this new work of yours on the Fresh-Water Fishes?

Nothing has appeared more admirable, more perfect in drawing and

color. This chromatic lithography resembles nothing we have had

thus far. What taste has directed the publication! Then the short

descriptions accompanying each plate add singularly to the charm

and the enjoyment of this kind of study. Accept my warm thanks, my

dear friend. I not only delivered your letter and the copy with it

to the king, but I added a short note on the merit of such an

undertaking. The counselor of the Royal Cabinet writes me

officially that the king has ordered the same number of copies of

the Fresh-Water Fishes as of the Fossil Fishes; that is to say, ten

copies. M. de Werther has already received the order. This is, to

be sure, but a slight help; still, it is all that I have been able

to obtain, and these few copies, with the king's name as

subscriber, will always be useful to you.

I cannot close this letter without asking your pardon for some

expressions, too sharp, perhaps, in my former letters, about your

vast geological conceptions. The very exaggeration of my

expressions must have shown you how little weight I attached to my

objections. . .My desire is always to listen and to learn. Taught

from my youth to believe that the organization of past times was

somewhat tropical in character, and startled therefore at these

glacial interruptions, I cried "Heresy!" at first. But should we

not always listen to a friendly voice like yours? I am interested

in whatever is printed on these topics; so, if you have published

anything at all complete lately on the ensemble of your geological

ideas, have the great kindness to send it to me through a

book-seller. . .

Shall I tell you anything of my own poor and superannuated works?

The sixth volume is wanting to my "Geography of the Fifteenth

Century" (Examen Critique). It will appear this summer. I am also

printing the second volume of a new work to be entitled "Central

Asia." It is not a second edition of "Asiatic Fragments," but a new

and wholly different work. The thirty-five sheets of the last

volume are printed, but the two volumes will only be issued

together. You can judge of the difficulty of printing at Paris and

correcting proofs here,--at Poretz or at Toplitz. I am just now

beginning to print the first number of my physics of the world,

under the title of "Cosmos:" in German, "Ideen zur erner physischen

Weltbeschreibung." It is in no sense a reproduction of the lectures

I gave here. The subject is the same, but the presentation does not

at all recall the form of a popular course. As a book, it has a

somewhat graver and more elevated style. A "spoken book" is always

a poor book, just as lectures read are poor however well prepared.

Published courses of lectures are my detestation. Cotta is also

printing a volume of mine in German, "Physikalische geographische

Erinnerungen." Many unpublished things concerning the volcanoes of

the Andes, about currents, etc. And all this at the age when one

begins to petrify! It is very rash! May this letter prove to you

and to Madame Agassiz that I am petrifying only at the extremities,

--the heart is still warm. Retain for me the affection which I hold

so dear.

A. DE HUMBOLDT.

In the following winter, or, rather, in the early days of March,

1841, Agassiz visited, in company with M. Desor, the glacier of the

Aar and that of Rosenlaui. He wished to examine the stakes planted

the summer before on the glacier of the Aar, and to compare the

winter and summer temperature within as well as without the mass of

ice. But his chief object was to ascertain whether water still

flowed from beneath the glaciers during the frosts of winter. This

fact would have a direct bearing upon the theory which referred the

melting and movement of the glaciers chiefly to their lower

surface, explaining them by the central heat of the earth as their

main cause. Satisfied as he was of the fallacy of this notion,

Agassiz still wished to have the evidence of the glacier itself.

The journey was, of course, a difficult one at such a season, but

the weather was beautiful, and they accomplished it in safety,

though not without much suffering. They found no water except the

pure and limpid water from springs that never freeze. The glacier

lay dead in the grasp of winter. The results of this journey,

tables of temperature, etc., are recorded in the "Systeme

Glaciaire."

In E. Desor's "Sejours dans les Glaciers" is found an interesting

description of the incidents of this excursion and the appearance

of the glaciers in winter. In ascending the course of the Aar they

frequently crossed the shrunken river on natural snow bridges, and

approaching the Handeck over fearfully steep slopes of snow they

had some difficulty in finding the thread of water which was all

that remained of the beautiful summer cascade. On the glacier of

the Aar they found the Hotel des Neuchatelois buried in snow, while

the whole surface of the glacier as well as the surrounding peaks,

from base to summit, wore the same spotless mantle. The

Finsteraarhorn alone stood out in bold relief, black against a

white world, its abrupt slopes affording no foothold for the snow.

The scene was far more monotonous than in summer. Crevasses, with

their blue depths of ice, were closed; the many-voiced streams were

still; the moraines and boulders were only here and there visible

through the universal shroud. The sky was without a cloud, the air

transparent, but the glitter of the uniform white surface was

exquisitely painful to the eyes and skin, and the travelers were

obliged to wrap their heads in double veils. They found the glacier

of Rosenlaui less enveloped in snow than that of the Aar; and

though the magnificent ice-cave, so well known to travelers for its

azure tints, was inaccessible, they could look into the vault and

see that the habitual bed of the torrent was dry. The journey was

accomplished in a week without any untoward accident.

In the summer of 1841 Agassiz made a longer Alpine sojourn than

ever before. The special objects of the season's work were the

internal structure of these vast moving fields of ice, the

essential conditions of their origin and continued existence, the

action of water within them as influencing their movement, and

their own agency in direct contact with the beds and walls of the

valleys they occupied. The fact of their former extension and their

present oscillations might be considered as established. It

remained to explain these facts with reference to the conditions

prevailing within the mass itself. In short, the investigation was

passing from the domain of geology to that of physics. Agassiz, who

was as he often said of himself no physicist, was the more anxious

to have the cooperation of the ablest men in that department, and

to share with them such facilities for observation and such results

as he had thus far accumulated. In addition to his usual

collaborators, M. Desor and M. Vogt, he had, therefore, invited as

his guest, during part of the season, the distinguished physicist,

Professor James D. Forbes, of Edinburgh, who brought with him his

friend, Mr. Heath, of Cambridge.* (* As the impressions of Mr.

Forbes were only made known in connection with his own later and

independent researches it is unnecessary to refer to them here.) M.

Escher de la Linth took also an active part in the work of the

later summer. To his working corps Agassiz had added the foreman of

M. Kahli, an engineer at Bienne, to whom he had confided his plans

for the summer, and who furnished him with a skilled workman to

direct the boring operations, assist in measurements, etc. The

artist of this year was M. Jacques Burkhardt, a personal friend of

Agassiz, and his fellow-student at Munich, where he had spent some

time at the school of art. As a draughtsman he was subsequently

associated with Agassiz in his work at various times, and when they

both settled in America Mr. Burkhardt became a permanent member of

Agassiz's household, accompanied him on his journeys, and remained

with him in relations of uninterrupted and affectionate regard till

his own death in 1867. He was a loyal friend and a warm-hearted

man, with a thread of humor running through his dry good sense,

which made him a very amusing and attractive companion.