554 THE LIVE OF JAMES D. FORBES. [APPEND. 



cordially approved of its appearing. I did not know, what you seem to 

 say in your letter, that Agassiz has claimed the main observation as his 

 own .... I will witness that 1st, He knew nothing about it : 2//f/, 

 When he did see it, he said it was superficial, and caused by superficial 

 sand ; 3rd, That he was the last to believe that it went to any depth. I 

 think your account very true, and not claiming (toe iot more than fully belongs 

 to you'.' 



I certainly anticipated that my forbearance with respect to 

 M. Agassiz would have been rightly interpreted, and that silent 

 acquiescence would have acknowledged the justice of my claim. 



The event proved otherwise. The particular steps which were 

 taken by M. Agassiz to vindicate what he professed to consider 

 his due, arbitrarily and unexpectedly claimed in this paper of 

 mine, were singularly in contrast to my conduct in the matter 

 of Humboldt's letter, and to the usage in such cases. But that 

 I am willing to pass over for the present, and I will now refer 

 to the new claims of priority which he ultimately substituted 

 for his own. 



III. 



We now pass on to the other claims to the priority of the 

 observation. 



About the same time that M. Agassiz claimed the observation 

 of the Lamellar Structure of Glaciers, in the letter to Humboldt, 

 he communicated verbally to the societies of Geneva and Neuf- 

 chatel the same fact ; and though my information is not specific 

 on this point, I presume that my name was not mentioned in 

 connection with it. This I learn from my friend Professor Guyot 

 of Neufchatel, who, immediately on hearing the account of the 

 observations on the Glacier of the Aar, recollected having 

 observed and described something similar, three years before, on 

 the Glacier of the Gries. The note containing this observation, 

 and others connected with glaciers, had been read in 1838 in the 

 presence of M. Agassiz, to the meeting of the Geological Society 

 of France at Porrentruy, but was published neither at large nor 

 in abstract. It appears to have dropped not only out of the 

 records of the meeting, but from the minds of those who were 

 present, since M. Agassiz, whom it was specially calculated to 

 interest, takes no notice of it in his book, published two years 

 later, containing his own observations, already quoted, on the 

 superficial striae ; which he could not in common fairness have 

 published without mentioning M. Guyot's contemporaneous and 

 far more important observation of the strmture, of which these 

 strise are only the outward indication, had he been acquainted 

 with its true bearing, or, in truth, had he recollected it at all. Be 

 this as it may, it seems that M. Guyot himself never repeated 



