CHAP, xv.j FORBES' GLACIER DISCOVERIES. 493 



subjects which had been previously treated (however 

 superficially or even erroneously) by others. And no- 

 where do we find it more conspicuous than in his 

 Travels through the Alps, where he collects the 

 scattered letters which he had for some time written to 

 Prof. Jameson, and adds to them the results of further 

 protracted and careful observation. 



He was the first who deserved to succeed in the study 

 of this very curious problem, for he was the first to go 

 to a glacier determined to measure and to examine what 

 actually takes place, unbiassed by a belief in and a 

 desire to promote any particular theory. Others pre- 

 <l him, but they too often went prepared to gather 

 only what could be made to fit in to the particular theory 

 of which they were the partisans, or they went altogether 

 unprepared with sound ideas of what to measure, and 

 suitable instruments wherewith to measure ; and, in 

 consequence, they missed, distorted, or misinterpreted 

 many of those points which Forbes saw almost at 

 once, and which very soon arranged themselves in his 

 mind in mutual interdependence. We may say at 

 once that Forbes did not completely solve this ex- 

 tivnicly interesting problem. He nowhere asserts that 

 li- has done so: and, indeed, some of his theoretical 

 conclusions are inconsistent with modern knowledge. 

 But there can be no question that his insight into the 

 problem, arrived at in at most a few weeks' measure- 

 nit -nt and study, was profound compared with that of 

 any of his contemporaries, who seem to have brought. 

 to it little but a happy facility in taking for granted, 

 ami a recklessness of tin- Jaws of dynamics which may 

 be fitly charaeteri/rd as sublimo. One of the few nu-n 

 who seem, in any point of consequence, to have had 

 even one clear and accurate idea on the subject before 

 K'-ndu. late Bishop of Aune'cy : but this 

 s> mixed up with error that it does not appear 

 likely that in L l.s it could ever have led to any- 



thing <: : f<T lieiidu holds and enunciates, sunn - 



times in the same sentence, facts and errors utterly 



