104 A CENTURY OF SCIENCE 



power of quick perception, his unmatched memory, his 

 perspicacity and acuteness, his way of classifying, judg- 

 ing and marshalling facts, Agassiz promptly learned the 

 whole mass of irresistible arguments collected patiently 

 during seven years by De Charpentier and Venetz, and 

 with his insatiable appetite and that faculty of assimila- 

 tion which he possessed in such a wonderful degree, he 

 digested the whole doctrine of the glaciers in a few 

 weeks. ' ' 



In July, 1837, Agassiz presented as his presidential 

 address before the Helvetic Society his memorable "Dis- 

 cours de Neuchatel," which was "the starting point of 

 all that has been written on the Ice-age," a term coined 

 at the time by his friend Schimper, a botanist. The first 

 part of this address is reprinted in French in Marcou's 

 book on Agassiz. The address was received with aston- 

 ishment, much incredulity, and indifference. Among the 

 listeners was the great German geologist Von Buch, who 

 "was horrified, and with his hands raised towards the 

 sky, and his head bowed to the distant Bernese Alps, 

 exclaimed : ' Sancte de Saussure, ora pro nobis ! ' 

 Even De Charpentier "was not gratified to see his glacial 

 theory mixed with rather uncalled for biological prob- 

 lems, the connection of which with the glacial age was 

 more than problematic. ' 9 Agassiz was then a Cuvierian 

 catastrophist and creationist, and advanced the idea of 

 a series of glacial ages to explain the destruction of the 

 geologic succession of faunas ! Curiously, this theory 

 was at once accepted by the American paleontologist 

 T. A. Conrad (35, 239, 1839). 



The classics in glacial geology are Agassiz 's Etudes 

 sur les Glaciers, 1840, and De Charpentier 's Essai sur les 

 Glaciers, 1841. Of the latter book, Marcou states that 

 it has been said: "It is impossible to be truly a geologist 

 without having read and studied it." In the English 

 language there is TyndalPs Glaciers of the Alps, 1860. 



The progress of the ideas in regard to Pleistocene 

 glaciation is presented in the following chapter by H. E. 

 Gregory. 



Older Glacial Climates. Hardly had the Pleistocene 

 glacial climate been proved, when geologists began to 

 point out the possibility of even earlier ones. An enthu- 



