iS 4 i 1880] GLEN ROY 175 



mere accurate measurements it might, I think without offence, Letter 

 go to the head of the real Surveyors. 



If Agassiz 1 or Buckland are on the Committee they will 

 sneer at the whole thing and declare the beaches are those of 

 a glacier-lake, than which I am sure I could convince you 

 that there never was a more futile theory. 



I look forward to Southampton 2 with much interest, and 



hope to hear to-morrow that the lodgings are secured to us. 



You cannot think how thoroughly I enjoyed our geological 



talks, and the pleasure of seeing Mrs. Homer and yourself here. 3 



[Here follows Darwin's Memorandum.] 



The Parallel Roads of Glen Roy, in Scotland, have been 

 the object of repeated examination, but they have never 

 hitherto been levelled with sufficient accuracy. Sir T. Lauder 

 Dick 4 procured the assistance of an engineer for this purpose, 



1 Louis Jean Rodolphe Agassiz (1807-73) entered a college at Bienne 

 at the age often, and from 1822 to 1824 he was a student at the Academy 

 of Lausanne. Agassiz afterwards spent some years as a student in the 

 Universities of Ziirich, Heidelberg, and Munich, where he gained 

 a reputation as a skilled fencer. It was at Heidelberg that his studies 

 took a definite turn towards Natural History. He took a Ph.D. degree 

 at Erlangen in 1829. Agassiz published his first paper in Isis in 1828, 

 and for many years devoted himself chiefly to Ichthyology. During 

 a visit to Paris he became acquainted with Cuvier and Alexander von 

 Humboldt ; in 1833, through the liberality of the latter, he began the 

 publication of his Recherches sur les Poissons Fossiles, and in 1840 he 

 completed his Etudes sur les Glaciers. In 1846 Agassiz went to Boston, 

 where he lectured in the Lowell Institute, and in the following year 

 became Professor of Geology and Zoology at Cambridge. During the 

 last twenty-seven years of his life Agassiz lived in America, and exerted 

 a great influence on the study of Natural History in the United States. 

 In 1836 he received the Wollaston Medal of the Geological Society 

 of London, and in 1861 he was selected for the Copley Medal of the 

 Royal Society. In 1873 Agassiz dictated an article to Mrs. Agassiz on 

 " Evolution and Permanence of Type," in which he repeated his strong 

 conviction against the views embodied in the Origin of Species. See Life, 

 Letters, and Works of Louis Agassiz, by Jules Marcou, 2 vols., New York, 

 1896; Louis Agassiz : his Life and Correspondence, edited by Elizabeth 

 Gary Agassiz, 2 vols., London, 1885 ; Smithsonian Report, 1873, p. 198. 



- The British Association meeting (1846). 



3 This letter is published in the privately printed Memoir of Leonard 

 Horner, II., p. 103. 



4 " On the Parallel Roads of Lochaber " (with map and plates), by Sir 

 Thomas Lauder Dick, Trans. R. Soc. Edinb., Vol. IX., p. i, 1823. 



