1841-42-] KARL SCHIMPER. 207 



ing the death of individuals, and then of its rising again, 

 due to the arrival of a new creation of animals, develop- 

 ing heat as a consequence. In his volume Agassiz 

 reproduced Schimper's small mathematical figure, and 

 it would have been well to quote Schimper as his 

 authority. Alexander Braun, when consulted, threw the 

 blame on Agassiz, but refused to take part in the dis- 

 pute. In a letter from Agassiz to Braun, published in 



Braun's Life, by his daughter, he says that if he did not 



/ 



quote and speak of Schimper in his ' Etudes sur les 

 Glaciers," it was in order to punish Schimper for his 

 unjustifiable conduct towards him; a very lame excuse, 

 for scientific ideas and discoveries are sacred property, 

 which cannot be cancelled under any circumstances. 

 If Agassiz had repeated the sentence in his Neuchatel 

 Address of 1837, "1'explication de tous ces phenomenes 

 (glaciaires) est le resultat de la combinaison de mes idees 

 et de celles de M. Schimper," everything would have 

 been satisfactory. 



It is strange that Agassiz did not abandon the theo- 

 ries advanced in his " Discours de Neuchatel," after its 

 delivery; for they met with not the smallest acquiescence 

 or encouragement, either from those who heard the 

 address or from those who read it afterward. De Char- 

 pentier was against it, and Sedgwick, the celebrated 

 geologist of Cambridge (England), expressed in happy 

 terms the impression made on him by the reading of the 



* 



" Etudes sur les Glaciers," when he said : ' I have read his 

 Ice-book. It is excellent, but in the last chapter he loses 

 his balance, and runs away with the bit in his mouth." 1 



1 "Life and Letters of Sedgwick," Vol. II., p. 18, Cambridge, 1890. 



