288 LOUIS AGASSIZ. 



ried on by him and his companions, which at- 

 tracted 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 gath- 

 ered 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 every- 

 where 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 de- 

 fining 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 



