558 THE LIFE OF JAMES D. FORBES. [APPEND. 



There are few sciences which have not offered parallel cases 

 of insulated observations which lie dormant for many years, 

 before, by being generalized and made units of a class of facts, 

 they form the basis of theoretical induction. This is what I 

 claim to have done : to have re-disc<wered M. Guyot's unpub- 

 lished and all but forgotten fact ; to have generalized it so as 

 to show that it was common to most if not all glaciers ; to 

 have explained the law of its occurrence in one glacier (the 

 lamellar surfaces of the glacier of the Ehone) ; and to have 

 applied it to account for two appearances formerly ascribed to 

 other and imaginary causes, the distribution of sand on the 

 surface of the ice, and the supposed stratification of the 

 terminal face of some glaciers. 



I might here close my observations on the question of 

 priority, but I will add a sentence or two, in order to avoid 

 all cavil. 



Can it be necessary to state that M. Agassiz has found a 

 friend M. Dubois obliging enough to state, in April 1841', 

 that M. Agassiz had described to a meeting at Bale, in 1838, a 

 structure similar to that noticed by M. Guyot, at Porrentruy, in 

 the same year ? Is it possible that discoveries in science can be 

 made without the consciousness of those who make them ? or 

 that a discovery made in 1838 shall be wholly misrepresented 

 by the discoverer himself iu 1840 (see Extract Third), claimed 

 anew for himself in 1841, and when re-claimed in the same year 

 by two other persons, the discoverer recollects to have heard at 

 Porrentruy the very fact which his friends assure him they 

 hi'; i rd him claim for himself at Bale the same year ? Yet such 

 is the newest claim of M. Agassiz to an observation, whicli a 

 discussion respecting priority of six months' duration failed to 

 recall to his mind, but which he is now persuaded that he made, 

 upon the friendly testimony of M. Dubois of Montpereux, in 

 the following words :-- 



EXTRACT ELEVENTH.^. Dubois' Certificate. 



' Je soussigue" conjoiutement avec M. Arnold Escher de la Linth, Secretaire 

 de la Section de Geologic de la Societe Helvetique des Sciences Naturelles 

 lors de la Reunion a Bale, certifie que dans les notes recueillies pendant la 

 Seance du 14 Septembre, 1838, il se trouve mentionne page 12 que M. Agassiz 

 a signale le fait de la structure lamellaire des glaciers, et qu'il en trouvait la 

 cause dans raccumulation des niatieres cougelables qui se deposent a la 

 surface du glacier. La note est accompagnee d'un dessin representaut cette 

 structure. ' FREDERICK DUBOIS. 



' Ptreux, 27 Avril, 1842.' 



Now, this was on the 14th September, 1838. M. Guyot made 

 his communication on the 6th September in the same year, con- 



