THE INCORPORATORS 143 
philosopher, where he met Agassiz, Schimper, Imhoff, and other 
naturalists. After a short sojourn in Stuttgart, Guyot returned 
to Neuchatel in 1827. Here, under the preaching of the 
Reverend Samuel Petit-pierre, he turned from science to the- 
ology, and began to prepare himself for the church, although his 
leisure hours were still spent in collecting plants and shells, and 
in other scientific activities. 
In 1829 he went to Berlin, chiefly to attend the lectures of 
Schleiermacher, Neander and other historians and theologians 
at the University of Berlin, but he also became interested in those 
of Hegel, Steffens, Hofmann, Dove, and other professors of the 
scientific faculty, and made the acquaintance of Humboldt. 
After a little time he found his inclinations toward the study of 
nature so strong that he abandoned theology for natural science. 
While in Berlin, Carl Ritter, the geographer, made an especially 
strong impression on him and turned his mind in the direction of 
geographical studies. At the end of five years at the University 
of Berlin, he received the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, tak- 
ing as the subject of his graduating thesis “‘ The Natural Classifi- 
cation of Lakes.” 
After leaving the university, he went to Paris and became 
tutor to the children of Count de Pourtalés-Gorgier, and. with 
them he visited the Pyrenees and travelled in Italy, Belgium, and 
Holland, and along the Rhine. While in Paris in 1838, he was 
urged by Agassiz to take up the study of the glaciers of the Alps, 
to which he himself had attracted the attention of the scientific 
world the preceding year by the announcement of his glacial 
theory. 
Guyot acceded to the request of his friend and spent some 
weeks in an examination of the Alpine glaciers. He made 
several important original discoveries regarding their structure 
and action, but as it had been agreed between himself and 
Agassiz that his special field should be considered to be the 
phenomena of the Swiss erratic boulders, his results were with- 
held from publication for forty years. He did, however, present 
a communication on the “ blue bands” of glaciers and the incli- 
