702 MEMOIR OF GUYOT. 



Having attended at Berlin the lectures of Dove on physics and 

 meteorology and those of liitter on physical geography, Guyot knew 

 when be went to the mountains what to look for in case the glaciers 

 were great flowing streams of ice, as had often been supi)osed ; be knew 

 that the flow of a stream is retarded along the sides and bottom by fric- 

 tion, and be naturally looked also for something in the encounter of the 

 glacier with rocks answering to molecular displacement. Hence, in his 

 six weeks of observations on the glaciers, he reached, without waste of 

 time, good conclusions — the conclusions of a physical geographer. His 

 investigation did not enable him to appreciate the interior fracturing 

 that works along with molecular displacement in the flow of the ice, 

 but his conclusion was still far in the right direction and decisive 

 against the hypothesis he opi)osed. That he did.not continue his study 

 of the glaciers to thoroughly established results was owing to his yield- 

 ing the subject afterward to Agassiz. Fidelity to his friend and his 

 volunteered agreement curbed in and silenced him ; and so his paper, 

 excepting the paragraphs on the " blue bauds," remained buried until 

 after Agassiz's decease. 



At Neuclidtel, Professor in the Academy, 1839 to 1848. — In 1839, at the 

 age of thirty-two, Guyot left Paris and returned to his native town. 

 He became at once an active member of the Society of the Natural 

 Sciences (which had been initiated by Agassiz in 1832), and was made 

 by the Society one of a committee — including also M. d' Osterwald, and 

 H. Ladame — for the organization of a system of meteorological observa- 

 tions in Switzerland and the selection of the best instruments for the 

 purpose. On the establishment of the "Academy " at Neucbatel, for 

 the purpose of furnishing a university education to the graduates of the 

 college or gymuasitim, he was appointed to the chair of history and 

 physical geography, and became a colleague of Agassiz. He hesitated 

 about taking charge of the department of history, as this bad not been 

 one of his special lines of study ; yet, once committed to it, he plunged 

 into the subject with great earnestness. He says he groped on among 

 the details for two years before he began to distinguish its grand pe- 

 riods, and the light as it broke in upon him caused so intense excitement 

 that he was made ill. 



Instruction was a great pleasure to bim, because of his deep interest 

 both in his subject and in his pupils. His two departments called out 

 from him thirteen general and special courses of lectures. With re- 

 gard to the lectures, Mr. Faure says : "From the first, in spite of bis 

 apprehensions, he captivated bis audience by bis easy, elegant, sympa- 

 thetic words, by the breadth of his views, and the abundance and happy 

 arrangement of his facts. He had, each winter afterward, the pleasure 



position, and origin appears to have been made by Prof. Henry D. Rogers at tlie Cam- 

 bridge meeting of tlie American Association in 1849 (Proc. Am. Assoc, ii, 181). But 

 Rogers attribuied the strncture in both to conditions of temperature and not, like 

 Tymdall, te pressure. 



