GLACIAL RESEARCHES. 261 



land 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 sum- 

 mer 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 seden- 

 tary work. He went expecting to confirm his 

 own doubts, and to disabuse his friend Char- 

 pentier 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 princi- 

 pal 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 pos- 



