at the Surface of the Terrestrial Globe. 399 



inclination to indolence, allows itself too easily to incline, to 

 believe impossible what would take some trouble to investi- 

 gate. We generally rather prefer imposing limits to our 

 faculties, than increasing their range by their exercise ; and tlie 

 history of thesciences is present to tell us, that there are few of 

 the great truths now recognised, which have not been treated 

 as chimerical and blasphemous, before they were demonstrated. 

 I now pause, in order that I may not digress from my sub- 

 ject, and I terminate this discourse by briefly recalling the 

 points on which I have insisted. The earth has its history, 

 a history as rich in great events as it is long to narrate, and of 

 which geology is now successfully collecting all the details. 

 But the facts whose certainty is generally recognised, have 

 also their instruction for us. The history of the earth pro- 

 claims its Creator. Tt tells us that the object and the term 

 of creation is man. He is announced in nature from the first 

 appearance of organised beings ; and each important modifica- 

 tion in the whole series of these beings is a step towards the 

 definitive term of the development of organic life. It only 

 remains for us to hope for a complete manifestation in our epoch 

 of the intellectual development which is allowed to human 

 nature. May the establishment whose inauguration has this 

 day assembled us, be one day reckoned among those institu- 

 tions which shall have contributed to this great object ! 



Account of Observations recently made on the Glacier of the Jar, 

 By Professor Agassiz. 



M. Agassiz has addressed a letter to the Frencli Academy of Sciences, 

 dated from the glacier of the Aar, 1st August 1842, in which we find the 

 following details : — *' For sixty hours, it has not ceased snowing here. 

 The temperature of the air has not risen above + 1 C (33°.8 F.) for two 

 days, and at night it has been at — 4° (24°.8 F.). The snow is extremely 

 fine and incoherent ; and it falls, for the most part, in the form of a light 

 dustj composed of very small needles very irregularly aggregated, and re- 

 maining for a long time suspended in the air before they fall to the earth. 

 This observation invalidates the assertion, so often repeated, that the 

 ncv^ m the high regions falls in the granular form which characterizes it. 

 Since I began to visit the Alps," adds IM. Agassiz, ** I have often seen 

 snow fall in the mouths of July, August, and September, at heights of 



