148 Professor Forbes on the First Discovery ofilie 



mj' recollection^ during tlio course of my stay in Switzerland^ of your 

 having made such an observation, I could not in any respect have bor- 

 rowed it from jou. As no printed record of your communication then 

 existed, I could not, of course^ have learned of it from books. You will also, 

 I doubt not, candidly admit, that your having failed to publish your ob- 

 servation in any, even the most abridged abstract, — your having omitted 

 to press it as a fact important in the theory of glaciers upon any of )'our 

 Swiss friends, and especially on M. Agassiz, who was writing a book on 

 the subject, shews that the observation had not excited either on j'our 

 part or that of your auditors at Porrcntruj-, any very lively interest. The 

 fact itself would probably have been soon lost to science, if it had not 

 been revived last summer by re-discovery, and by a strong indication of 

 its generality, and importance in the tlieories now agitated. 



* * * * 



" Every one in the slightest degree conversant with questions of this 

 kind will sec, on reading M. Agassiz' letter, that your observations com- 

 municated three years before at a provincial meeting, not published even 

 in the vaguest form in the minutes of the proceedings, nor alluded to in 

 their writings by any one of the contemporary authors who are stated to 

 have been present, leave my claim to have made the observation inde- 

 pendentl}', and first insisted on its importance and generality, quite un- 

 impcached. 



* * * * 



" My firm belief is, that M. Agassiz had totally forgotten this passage 

 in the verbal proceedings at Porrcntruy. I believe him to be incapable 

 of the sustained duplicity of affected ignorance and surj^rise when I first 

 pointed out the fact to his notice on the 9lh of August. I believe his 

 present newly displu}-cd zeal for your originality in this matter to be oc- 

 casioned solely by finding it impracticable to maintain the charge against 

 me of jjlagiarism and ingratitude towards himself, which he at first alone 

 iirged. 



"The dilemma in which M. Agassiz has placed himself appears to be 

 this :— 



" Either he was acquainted with this structure of ice on the 9tli August, 

 or he was not. 



" If he was not acquainted with it, he learned it from me ; for he has 

 never attempted to maintain that he shewed it to me. 



" If he was acquainted with it, he learned it from you. And if he 

 learned it from either of '..s, how does he claim it as his own in the letter 

 to Humboldt, and in one other private letter at least, not yet published? 

 I am, my Dear Sir, yours very truly, James D. Forbes." 



" Professor Guyot." 



There are few sciences which have not offered parallel cases 

 of insulated observations which lie dormant for many years, 

 before, by being generalized and made units of a class of facts, 

 thev form the basis of theoretical induction. This is what I 



