1839-40-] LETTER TO HUMBOLDT. 169 



of Glaciers in Scotland and the North of England," after 

 Agassiz's paper, and to sustain him by what he had 

 learned in his company during the fall and afterwards. 

 At present, to make amends for their slowness in 

 recognizing old glaciers, the Scotch geologists, with 

 James Geikie at their head, are claiming that they had 

 found evidences of the existence of no less than five 

 glacial periods during the Quaternary epoch. 



Agassiz's three-months visit in the British Isles dur- 

 ing .the autumn of 1840 may be counted as his most 

 successful period of happy and important discoveries, 

 and he returned with the great satisfaction of having 

 extended the glacial doctrine to Scotland, the North of 

 England, and Ireland, and having first explained the 

 complicated organization of the fossil flying-fishes of 

 the Old Red Sandstone. The following letter to 

 Humboldt gives an excellent resume of his three 



months' exploration : - 



NEUCHATEL, 27 dec., 1840. 



a SON EXCELLENCE M. A. DE HUMBOLDT. 



Moil Cher et Excellent Ami, - - Je suis de retour a Neuchatel 

 depuis huit jours et deja je me suis remis au travail. J'ai pris la 

 ferme resolution de ne rien faire cet hiver que des " Poissons fos- 

 siles " et ^espere achever mon ouvrage avant 1'ete. Pour y parvenir 

 je ne publierai pour le moment que les mille especes les plus inte- 

 ressantes de maniere a en faire un corps cTouvrage lie et je don- 

 nerai plus tard dans un Supplement 6 a 700 especes que je n'ai pas 

 encore complement etudiees. Mon dernier voyage en Angleterre 

 nVa fait faire des progres reels en Ichthyologie fossile ; j'ai surtout 

 etendu mes observations sur les especes siluriennes, devoniennes 

 et houilleres. Les genres de T Old Red 11 sont surtout tres 

 remarquables. Le pretendu Coleoptere gigantesque de Fifeshire : 



1 " History of the County of Fife," by J. Anderson, 4to, Edinburgh. 



