OF ARTS AND SCIENCES. 815 



intimate structui-e and tlie movements of ice formations, he established 

 himself, in the summer of 1840, on the median moraine of the Aar 

 glacier, and lodged his party, which consisted of Desor, Vogt, Burk- 

 hardt, and Celestin Nicolet, under a large block of gneiss. This 

 comfortless abode, which was invaded by frost at night and by trick- 

 ling water in the daytime, was facetiously called V Hotel des Neuchatelois. 

 Burkhaidt used to relate how it was the privilege of him who first 

 waked in the morning to direct with his finger the little streams of 

 snow-water that meandered down the stone roof in such a way as to 

 drip on the upturned foces of his sleeping companions. Such trivial 

 anecdotes give us a vivid idea of the cheerful spirit in which these 

 young men met the hardships and toil which were inseparable from 

 their investigations. In 1842 a hut, of more comfortable character, 

 was built on the bank which overhangs the left side of the glacier, and 

 this served as a shelter during the rest of their visits. In 1840 and 

 1841 he published, in French and German, Etudes sur les Glaciers, 

 accompanied by fine plates. His Systeme Glaciaire, with its maps and 

 illustrations, did not appear till 1847. These great works, with 

 numerous minor papers that accompanied them, have given Agassiz the 

 deserved position of founder of the Glacial Theory. 



While thus engrossed in geological and paleontological studies of the 

 first importance, he still found time for other investigations. After a 

 series of careful experiments in moulding, he produced in 1839 his 

 paper Sur les Moides de 3Iollusques vivans et fossiles. Therein he 

 showed that the soft parts of mollusca impress their form on the 

 interior of the shell, which form can be reproduced by a cast, whose 

 inequalities will represent those of the original animal. Therefore the 

 casts of mollusks, so numerous in certain formations, were no longer to 

 be considered as worthless. Passing from known to unknown, he first 

 made interior casts of living shells, and studied them side by side with 

 the animals ; and the knowledge of the organs thus obtained was 

 ajiplied, mutatis mutandis, to fossil casts. This essay was followed 

 (1842-45) by his Etudes critiques sur les Mollusques fossiles. During 

 the same period his attention was further drawn to two lines of research 

 which were destined to interest him ever after. They were the 

 Radiata and the study of Embryology. The latter was confined to the 

 development in the e^g of the Swiss white fish {^Coregonus palaea). 

 Experiments continued through several seasons on artificially fecun- 

 dated eggs were conducted, under the direction of Agassiz, by Karl Vogt, 

 and were published in 1842 as a part of the Poissons d'Eaii douce. 

 And it is worthy of note that the government of Neuchatel issued in 



