746 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



the poor but worthy student of pure science in this country. It is 

 needless for me to insist on the estimation in which Prof. John Tyndall 

 is held among us. We know him to be a man whose heart is as large 

 as his head, both contributing to the cause of science. We regard 

 him as one of the ablest physicists of the time, and one of the most 

 level-headed philosophers that England has ever produced a man 

 whose intellect is as symmetrical as the circle, with its every point 

 equidistant from the centre. We have been the recipient of former 

 endowments from that land which, we thank God, was our mother- 

 country, for from it we have drawn our language, our liberty, our 

 laws, our literature, our science, and our energy, and without whose 

 wealth our material development would not be what it is at the pres- 

 ent day. Count Rumford, the founder of the Royal Society of Lon- 

 don, in earlier years endowed a scientific chair in one of our larger 

 universities, and Smithson transferred his fortune to our shores to 

 promote the diffusion of science. Now, while these are noble gifts, 

 yet Count Rumford was giving to his own countrymen for he was 

 an American and they were posthumous gifts from men of large for- 

 tune. But the one I now refer to was from a man who ranks not with 

 the wealthy, and he laid his offering upon the altar of science in this 

 country with his own hands ; and it has been both consecrated and 

 blest by noble words from his own lips ; all of which makes the gift a 

 rich treasure to American science ; and I think we can assure him that, 

 as the same Anglo-Saxon blood flows in our veins as does in his (tem- 

 pered, 'tis true, with the Celtic, Teutonic, Latin, etc.), he may expect 

 much from the American student in pure science as the offspring of his 

 gift and his example. 







THE GLACIERS AND THEIR INVESTIGATORS. 



By Prof. JOHN TYNDALL. 



SOON after my return from America, I learned with great concern 

 that a little book of mine, published prior to my departure, had 

 given grave offence to some of the friends and relatives of the late 

 Principal Forbes ; and I was specially grieved when informed that the 

 chastisement considered due to this offence was to be administered by 

 gentlemen between whom and myself I had hoped mutual respect and 

 amity would forever reign. We had, it is true, met in conflict on an- 

 other field ; but hostilities had honorably ceased, old wounds had, to 

 all appearance, been healed, and I had no misgiving as to the per- 

 manence of the peace established between us. 



The genesis of the book referred to is this: At Christmas, 18*71, it 

 fell to my lot to give the brief course of " Juvenile Lectures " to which 



