MURCHISON ON THE GLACIAL THEORY. 341 



a terrestrial glacial theory, there can be little 

 risk that such a doctrine should take too deep 

 a hold of the mind. . . . The existence of 

 glaciers in Scotland and England (I mean in 

 the Alpine sense) is not, at all events, estab- 

 lished to the satisfaction of what I believe to 

 be by far the greater number of British geolo* 

 gists." 



Twenty years later, with rare candor, Mur- 

 chison wrote to Agassiz as follows ; by its con- 

 nection, though not by its date, the extract is 

 in place here : " I send you my last anniver- 

 sary address, which I wrote entirely myself; 

 and I beg you to believe that in the part of it 

 that refers to the glacial period, and to Europe 

 as it was geographically, I have had the sin- 

 cerest pleasure in avowing that I was wrong 

 in opposing as I did your grand and original 

 idea of my native mountains. Yes ! I am now 

 convinced that glaciers did descend from the 

 mountains to the plains as they do now in 

 Greenland." 



During the summer of 1842, at about the 

 same date with Murchison's letter disclaiming 

 the glacial theory, Agassiz received, on the 

 other hand, a new evidence, and one which 

 must have given him especial pleasure, of the 

 favorable impression his views were making in 

 some quarters in England. 



