1841 1882] ICE- ACTION 151 



the compliment of thinking Murchison not seeing as worth Letter 500 



nothing ; but I confess I am astonished, so glaringly clear 



after two or three days did the evidence appear to me. Have 



you seen last New li<{ in. Phil, fount.} it is ice and glaciers 



almost from beginning to end. Agassiz 8 says he saw (and ha 



laid down) the two lowest terraces of Glen Roy in the valley 



of the Spcan, opposite mouth of Glen Roy itself, where no one 



else has seen them. I carefully examined that spot, owing to 



the sheep tracks [being] nearly but not quite parallel to the 



terrace. So much, again, for difference of observation. I do 



not pretend to say who is right. 



To J. D. Hooker. Letter 501 



■.n, Oct. 12th, 1849. 



I was heartily glad to get your last letter ; but on 



my life your thanks for my very few and very dull 



letters quite scalded me. I have been very indolent and 



selfish in not having oftcner written to you and kept my ears 



priest. Buckland travelled on horseback over a large part of the south- 

 west of England, guided by the geological maps of William Smith. In 

 1813 he was appointed to the Chair of Mineralogy at Oxford, and soon 

 afterwards to a newly created Readership in Geology. In 1S23 the 

 Reliquiae Diluviance was published, a work which aimed at supporting 

 the records of revelation by scientific investigations. In 1S24 Buckland 

 was President of the Geological Society, and in the following year he left 

 Oxford for the living of Stoke Charity, near Whitchurch, Hampshire. 

 The Bridgewater Treatise appeared in 1836. In 1845 Buckland was 

 appointed Dean of Westminster ; he was again elected president of the 

 Geological Society in 1840, and in 184S he received the Wollaston medal. 

 An entertaining account of Buckland is given in Mr. Tuckwell's Remi- 

 niscences of Oxford, London, 1900, p. 35, with a reproduction of the 

 portrait from Gordon's Life of Buckland. 



1 The Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal, Vol. XXXIII. (April 

 October), 1842, contains papers by Sir G. S. .Mackenzie, Prof. H. G. Brown, 

 Jean de Charpentier, Roderick Murchison, Loui-- A all dealing with 



glaciers or ice ; also letters to the Editor relating to Prof. Forbes' account 

 of his recent observations on Glaciers, and a paper by Charles Darwin 

 entitled " Notes on the Effects produced by the Ancient Glaciers of 

 Carnarvonshire, and on the Boulders transported by Floating Ice." 



3 The Glacial Theory and its Recent Progress, by Louis Agassiz, he. 

 cit., p. 216. Agassiz describes the parallel terraces on the flanks of Glen 

 Roy and Glen Spean ^p. 230), and expresses himself convinced "that the 

 Glacial theory alone satisfies all the exigencies of the phenomenon " ot 

 the parallel road.-,. 



