314 PROCEEDINGS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY 



near to the natural affinities. The preparation of these volumes was 

 laborious in tlie extreme. Agassiz was obliged to travel with an artist, 

 in oixler to examine and figure the specimens which could not be sent 

 to Neuchatel. The expense, too, was far beyond his slender means, 

 so that, despite the aid obtained through Humboldt and other warm 

 friends, he incurred heavy debts, which hampered him for many years. 

 He was, however, a man who counted neither money nor time nor 

 labor when knowledge was in the balance, and he hesitated not to enter 

 on new and intricate investigations in the midst of his ori^rinal work. 

 Such was the mental capacity of this naturalist, not yet thirty years 

 old, and such his endurance of continuous labor, that these numerous 

 threads of research, instead of jDroducing a hopeless tangle in his mind, 

 seemed each to serve as a separate clew to the truth of nature. Already 

 he had turned a curious eye towards the vast ice masses which furrow 

 the sides of his native mountains, and in 1834 made a report on the 

 observations of Hugi concei'uing the structure of glaciers. His sum- 

 mer vacations spent among the high ranges gave him good chances to 

 push an investigation whose importance grew each year greater in his 

 eyes. It was in 1837 that he threw what can only be called a bomb- 

 shell into the geological camp. In July of that year the members of 

 the Helvetic Society of Natural Sciences had assembled at Neuchatel ; 

 and it fell to Agassiz, in his capacity of president, to deliver the opening 

 discourse. It was the noted Discours sur I'ancienne Extension des 

 Glaciers, in which he carried to its rigid conclusion the fact, already 

 observed by Venetz and Charpentier, that boulders are transported 

 and rocks scratched and polished by glacial ice ; and inasmuch as 

 Switzerland is strown with these boulders, and exhibits in many places 

 the scratching and polishing of rock surfaces, he did not hesitate to 

 cover the whole country with a sheet of ice of vast thickness, and to 

 extend the same condition of things over the north of Europe. This 

 awful heresy fell with startling effect on the ears of the assembly. 

 Leopold von Buch, the greatest geologist of his time, lost all control 

 of himself and denounced the new theory with unmeasured severity. 

 When shown the scratched surfaces near Neuchatel, he replied that the 

 slides of the school-boys had made them ; and he retired at last, exclaim- 

 ing, " Sancte de Saussure, ora pro nobis." Nothing could better 

 have i^romoted the progress of truth than such violent opposition. 

 Agassiz was spurred to fresh exertions, and began next year a series 

 of detailed explorations, which were continued for eight successive 

 seasons, and were especially thorough in the neighborhood of Mont 

 Blanc and in the Bernese Oberlaud. Determined to ascertain the 



