MURCHISON ON THE GLACIAL THEORY. 341 



a terrestrial glacial theory, there can be little 

 risk that such a doctrine should take too deep 

 a hold of the mind. . . . The existence of 

 glaciers in Scotland and England (I mean in 

 the Alpine sense) is not, at all events, estab- 

 lished to the satisfaction of what I believe to 

 be by far the greater number of British geolo- 

 gists." 



Twenty years later, with rare candor, Mur- 

 chison wrote to Agassiz as follows ; by its con- 

 nection, though not by its date, the extract is 

 in place here : " I send you my last anniver- 

 sary address, which I wrote entirely myself; 

 and I beg you to believe that in the part of it 

 that refers to the glacial period, and to Europe 

 as it was geographically, I have had the sin- 

 cerest pleasure in avowing that I was wrong 

 in opposing as I did your grand and original 

 idea of ray native mountains. Yes ! I am now 

 convinced that glaciers did descend from the 

 mountains to the plains as they do now in 

 Greenland." 



During the summer of 1842, at about the 



O 7 



same date with Murchison's letter disclaiming 

 the glacial theory, Agassiz received, on the 

 other hand, a new evidence, and one which 

 must have given him especial pleasure, of the 

 favorable impression his views were making in 

 some quarters in England. 



