GLACIAL GEOLOGY IN AMERICA. 357 



in his address as retiring president of the Association of American 

 Geologists, in 1841, gave a broad and careful review of the drift 

 phenomena in eastern North America, and referred to the work of 

 Agassiz, Buckland, and Lyell with great interest, as having given 

 him " a new geological sense " in observing these phenomena, and 

 said, with prophetic foresight, " Henceforth, glacial action must 

 form an important chapter in geology." 



But the time was not ripe for the understanding and acceptance 

 of the glacial theory as a later generation has come to know it. 

 The studies of Agassiz and his confreres had been among glaciers 

 upon mountain slopes, and hence, while many of the drift phenomena 

 were strikingly accounted for, others were not and could not be. So 

 it came to pass that, while Professor Hitchcock and others in this 

 country were strongly impressed, they were not satisfied, and held 

 for years an uncertain position. The glacial indications conformed 

 in some aspects to the theory, but not in others; the striae and 

 groovings, instead of following valleys, all had a general trend to the 

 southward, and the bowlders were carried across great depressions 

 and deposited upon heights. How could these conditions be due to 

 glaciers? Could ice flow uphill, or move long distances over level 

 areas? These and other phenomena, such as the peculiar distribution 

 of drift material, in " drumlin " ridges and the like, had no ex- 

 planation. Hence, notwithstanding President Hitchcock's utter- 

 ances above quoted, and his similar Postscript on the subject of 

 drift and moraines, appended in the same year to his volume on the 

 Geology of Massachusetts, we find him in 1843, when again address- 

 ing the Association of Geologists, adopting a modified tone, dwelling 

 upon these points of difficulty, and seeking a compromise view, which 

 he called " glacio-aqueous." The great influence also of Murchison 

 and Lyell had been thrown into the scale in favor of the iceberg 

 theory, and this fact doubtless had much to do with the slow develop- 

 ment of true conceptions. Lyell visited America in 1842, and was 

 present at the American Geologists' meeting, advocating the floating- 

 ice doctrine, to which most of our observers already leaned; and 

 so the views of Agassiz and the glacial school had to wait for a decade 

 before they found general acceptance or even audience. 



This, we may note in passing, Is but one marked instance out of 

 many in the history of science, wherein the personal influence of 

 eminent leaders has obstructed and retarded the advance of true 

 knowledge. The whole recognition of the Cambrian system, as pre- 

 Silurian and distinct, was suppressed and prevented for many years 

 by Murchison's intense opposition to the views of Sedgwick. Simi- 

 lar facts might be cited in this country, did we care to mention names. 

 Science can not claim, as is sometimes asserted, that it possesses or 



