198 LOUIS AGASSIZ. [CHAP. vm. 



Agassiz took the side of his secretary, and published, 

 on the 2ist of April, 1842, a pamphlet of ten octavo 

 pages, without title, but which may be called, " A reply 

 to Mr. James D. Forbes on the laminated structure of 

 glaciers." The paper, although " privately distrib- 

 uted," was circulated largely among Agassiz's friends 

 to the number of five hundred copies. It began with 

 a reprint of a letter to M. Desor, under the date of 

 nth March, 1842, published by Forbes, with the 

 remark : " The following letter from Professor Forbes 

 to M. Desor of Neuchatel was written in answer to one 

 from the latter to the former, in which Professor Forbes 

 is charged with having, in a paper on the structure of 

 the ice of glaciers . . . assumed as his own a discovery 

 previously well known to M. Agassiz and his friends. 

 It appears that this injurious assertion has been pretty 

 extensively circulated through private channels, and, in 

 consequence, Professor Forbes has been advised by his 

 friends to make his denial equally known." The asser- 

 tion that Desor's written letter " has been pretty exten- 

 sively circulated through private channels ' involved 

 a gratuitous supposition without foundation; the letter 

 was not printed, and neither Agassiz nor Desor had 

 even kept a copy of it. Forbes's printed letter, on 

 the contrary, was largely circulated, although no copy 

 was addressed to Agassiz ; and Agassiz was obliged to 

 make use of the " Private copy for Mr. Guyot ' in 

 order to have it reprinted in his pamphlet. If the 

 "confidential adviser" of Agassiz, as Forbes calls 

 Desor, erred in writing to Forbes in a rather surly 

 tone, Forbes's letter is much more objectionable. In it 



