ARNOLD HENRY GUTOT. 263 



a formal vote, deposited as a voucher with the Society of Natural 

 Sciences at Neufchatel, and was printed by that society in 1883. This 

 paper contained the following contributions to the subject : 1. The 

 sloping of the terminal beds of glaciers toward their interior, and their 

 origin as closed-up crevasses. 2. The laminated structure or blue 

 bands of glacier-ice. 3. The cause of the fan-shaped disposition of 

 crevasses. 4. The more rapid motion of the glacier's center than of 

 the sides. 5. The more rapid motion of the top than the bottom of 

 the glacier. 6. The movement of glaciers which takes place by means 

 of a molecular displacement, whence results the plasticity of the glacier. 

 Later, he added the law of the formation of transverse crevasses in a 

 plane perpendicular to the steepest slope of the glacier. With rare 

 modesty Guyot never took part in the fierce discussions caused by the 

 claim laid by others to his own discoveries, contenting himself with a 

 simple statement of the facts published long afterward in his memoir 

 on Agassiz. 



In 1839 Guyot accepted a call to the Academy of Neufchatel, where 

 his friend Agassiz was then settled, and there he remained till his re- 

 moval to America in 1848. His chair was that of History and Physi- 

 cal Geography, and he regarded the years of his work there as the 

 period of his greatest intellectual activity. During this time he gave 

 much attention to his glacial work, taking up the geological side of the 

 question, the erratic blocks and ancient extension of the glaciers, 

 and devoting to this work " absolutely single-handed, seven laborious 

 summers, from 1840 to 1847." This gigantic undertaking was brought 

 to a successful conclusion, though the results were but partially pub- 

 lished, inasmuch as the " Syst^me Glaciaire," by Agassiz, Guyot, and 

 Desor, never went further than the first volume (Paris, 1847). Guy- 

 ot's collection of five thousand erratic rocks, illustrating eleven erratic 

 basins, now fills a room in the Princeton Museum, a monument of 

 incredibly pains-taking labor. 



The political disturbances of 1848 induced Guyot to follow his 

 friend Agassiz to America, and he lived for some time at Cambridge, 

 Massachusetts. He first attracted public attention by the remarkable 

 series of lectures afterward published in the well-known book "Earth 

 and Man." These lectures were the starting-point of a great reform in 

 the historical and geographical teaching of this country. For six years 

 he was engaged by the Board of Education of Massachusetts as a lec- 

 turer to the normal schools on geography and the methods of teaching 

 it, and after he came to Princeton he followed up the work there 

 commenced by preparing a series of geographical text-books and large 

 maps. To use the words of a recent writer in " Science " with regard 

 to these books : " It is not too much to say that they revolutionized 

 the methods of teaching geography. Every series of geographies which 

 has since appeared shows the influence of Guyot." He threw aside 

 the old routine methods, and brought the pupil face to face with Na- 



