INVITED TO VISIT ENGLAND. 231 



tion, accompanied by fossil fishes or by the 

 drawings of rare or unique specimens. He 

 was known in all the museums of Europe as 

 an indefatigable worker and collector, seeking 

 everywhere materials for comparison. 



Among the letters of this date is one from 

 Charpentier, one of the pioneers of glacial 

 investigation, under whose auspices, two years 

 later, Agassiz began his inquiries into glacial 

 phenomena. He writes him from the neigh- 

 borhood of Bex, his home in the valley of the 

 Rhone, the classic land of glacial work ; but 

 he writes of Agassiz's special subjects, inviting 

 him to come and see such fossils as were to be 

 found in his neighborhood, and to investigate 

 certain phenomena of upheaval and of plu- 

 tonic action in the same region, little dream- 

 ing that the young zoologist was presently 

 to join him in his own chosen field of re- 

 search. 



Agassiz now began also to receive pressing 

 invitations from the English naturalists, from 

 Buckland, Lyell, Murchison, and others, to 

 visit England, and examine their wonderful 

 collections of fossil remains. 



