1882.] ^■^* [Lesley. 



ogist, and Charles Martins the botanist of Montpellier, with a commis- 

 sion from the French government to explore the desert of Sahara, Avhich 

 they discovered to be of recent age by finding in its rocks recent shells. 

 Here also Desor gratified his love of dolmens and menhirs, and greatly 

 enlarged his prehistoric studies in that direction : but it was not until 1875 

 or thereabout that he became a zealous student of the mysterious cup and 

 circle markings on the erratic blocks of Switzerland, and learned by a 

 wide spread and laborious correspondence with his fellow-workers in all 

 countries that they were not only to be seen on rocks from India to Scot- 

 land, but on the walls of the most ancient Christian churches of Northern 

 Germany. 



Desor was always recognized as an able geologist. His local work in the 

 Jura, mostly carried on with the assistance of his poor friend and able 

 palaeontologist Gressly, showed ample ability to grapple with diflicult 

 structural problems, although he never freed himself from the prejudice 

 in favor of split anticinals which the extraordinary section across the 

 mouth of the Val de Travers would naturally inspire in any man who 

 lived within sight of it. This prejudice, moreover, he shared with all the 

 geologists of middle Europe. His astonishment and admiration for the 

 vinbroken arches of the Appalachian belt therefore, when at length his 

 eyes were opened to their true character, was unbounded. But in spite of 

 the impression thus made, he remained a consistent opponent of those 

 views of cyclical erosion which were gradually forced upon American 

 geologists, and were afterwards made popular in England by Beete Jukes 

 in the course of the Irish survey. 



Desor was the colleague of Bernard Studer, Peter Merian and Esher 

 von der Linth in the commission of the geological survey of Switzerland. 

 During my last visit to his own home in Neufchatel, in 1880, he showed 

 me an upper room in which the commission kept its archives and met for 

 consultation. But the venerable Studer, the chief of the survey, has his 

 home at the capital of the Confederation, Bern. One of the most remark- 

 able pieces of geological investigation ever made was a section of a range 

 of the Jura north of Neufchatel, through which a long railroad tunnel 

 was to be driven. Desor and Gressly projected the stratification as 

 it should be found by the engineers. When the tunnel was finished the 

 actual and hypothetical sections were almost absolutely identical. Each 

 formation, almost each stratum, was struck at exactl}^ the point indicated. 

 It was a notable triumph of exact application of science to practical ends. 



The political life of Desor is viewed differently, of course, by different 

 classes of his friends. There is intense conservatism in Switzerland, and 

 the overthrow of the aristocracy of the Canton of Neufchatel by the dem- 

 ocrats or radicals has never been forgotten nor forgiven. 



As late as 1878. when I rode one day with Desor and Berthoud up the 

 Val de Travers, they Avere making merry over some scurrilous attacks 

 upon themselves in one of the newspapers ; Desor pointed out to me a pas- 

 sage in which they were called derisively the two small gods of Ncufchatel. 



