MONT BLAIfC Ai^D THE MER DE GLACE. 19 



Mount Auburn, a rude but eloquent monument, in its ex- 

 ternals as unlike the imposing sculptures which surround 

 it as in the interest it awakens more touching, more 

 inspiring and more catholic. On one side is engraved: 



Jean Louis Rudolphe Agassiz. 

 On the other: 



Born at Motier, Switzerland, May 28, 1807. 

 Died at Cambridge, Mass., December 14, 1873. 



And on the edge: 



Boulder from the Aar Glacier."^ 



Winding through the gorges, often vineyard- fringed on 



either hand, we come out at length into the broad valley 



of Switzerland, resting between the Jura and the Bernese 



Alps. The Alpward glimpses and nearer landscapes be- 



* In according to Agassiz the great credit of placing the '' Glacier Theory " 

 on a firm foundation, we must not overlook the work of his predecessors. In 

 1815 Playfair attributed to glaciers the transportation of erratic blocks. In 1821 

 M. Venetz advanced the opinion that the glaciers of Valais and adjacent regions 

 had formerly a vastly greater development than at present (Venetz, Mhtioire sur 

 la temperatttre dans les Allies, 1821, in Mt'moircs de la socie'te' helvetique des sci 

 ences naturelles, vol. i, pt. 2). M. Venetz does not in this memoir attempt to 

 explain by the same means the general phenomena of the boulder formation, but 

 it IS reported that some years later he gave this extension to his views. In 1829 

 Goethe clearly shadowed forth the same theory in Wil/ulm Meister's Wancler- 

 jahre, vol. ii, ch. 10. In 1834 M. Jean dc Charpentier, in a memoir read before the 

 "Helvetic Society of Natural Sciences," at Lucerne, on the probable cause of the 

 transport of erratic blocks in the valley of tlic Rhone (See Aniiales des M'uies, 

 viii; also in German, in Froebel and Heer's Mitlheiluiigen, aus devi Gebiete der 

 theoretischeu Krdkinide,\y 482 s^r/.), presented substantially the modern theory of 

 glacier transportation. This paper was the occasion which directed the attention 

 of Agassiz to the same investigation, and hence, in 183(5, he si)ent some months 

 in Charpciiticr's vicinity for the purpose of making observations for himself 

 (Charpentier, Essal, p. 1). 



In 1837 M. Agassiz, as president of the same society, delivered at Neuchatel 

 an opening discourse on this subject. It gave rise to a discussion which occupied 

 a large part of the time of the session. 



In 1840 appeared Agassiz' great work. Etudes sur les Glaciers^ with an atlas 

 of thirty two plates. In the same year appeared works by others Godeffroy, 

 Notice sur les Glaciers, les moraines et les Blocs erratiques des Alpes, Paris and 

 Geneva; Le Chanoine Rendu. T/ieorie des Glaciers de la Savoie, Chamhvry. M. 

 Jean de Charpentier's Essai sur les Glaciers was then written, but it seems not 

 to have been publisked till 1841. 



