BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIR OF ARNOLD GUYOT.* 



By James D. Dana. 



It is a remarkable fact in the history of American science that, forty 

 years since, the small Rei)ublicof Switzerland lost, and America gained, 

 three scientists who became leading men of the country in their several 

 departments — Agassiz in Zoology, Guyot in Physical Geography, and 

 Lesquereux in Paleontological Botany ; Agassiz coming in 184G, Guyot 

 and Lesquereux in 1848. A fourth, Mr. L. F. De Pourtales, who ac- 

 companied Agassiz, also merits prominent mention; for he was "the 

 pioneer of deep sea dredging in America."! The Society of the Nat- 

 ural Sciences at Neuchatel lost all four. As an American Academy of 

 Sciences we can not but rejoice in our gain ; but we may also indulge 

 at least in a passing regret for Neuchatel, and recognize that in the 

 life and death of Agassiz, Pourtales, and Guyot we have common inter- 

 ests and sympathies. 



My own acquaintance with Professor Guyot commenced after his ar- 

 rival in America, when half of his life was already' passed. In prepar- 

 ing this sketch of our late colleague I have therefore drawn largely from 

 others, and chiefly from his family, and from a memorial address by Mr. 

 Charles Faure, of Geneva, one of his pupils, which was published in 

 1884 by the Geographical Society of Geneva. t 



Youth — Education in Switzerland and German]/, 1807 to 1835. — To ob- 

 tain a clear insight into the character of Professor Guyot it is in)por- 

 tant to have in view, at the outset, the fact that the Guyot family, early 

 in the sixteenth century, became Protestants through the preaching of 

 the French reformer, Farel, the cotemporary of Luther ; and also the 

 sequel to this fact, that at the revocation of the edict of Nantes, the 

 Guyot family was one of the sixty that moved into the principality of 

 Neuchatel and Valangin from the valleys of Pragela and Queyraz in 

 the high Alps of Dauphiny. Thus the race was one of earnestness and 

 high purpose, of the kind and origin that contributed largely to the 

 foundations of the American Republic. 



* Read before the National Academy of Sciences, April "21, 18S6. (Biographical 

 Memoirs, vol. ii, pp, 309-347.) 



t A. Agassiz, Aiuer. Jour. Sci., 3d ser., xx, 254, 18S0. 



t Vie et Travaux d'Arnold Guyot, 1807-18S4, par Charles Faure, 72 pp., 8vo. Read 

 before the Geographical Society of Gi-ucva, April 25 aud August 25, 1884. 



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