B.] FORBES, GUYOT, AND AGASSIZ. 559 



sequently M. Agassiz could not have revisited the glaciers in 

 the interval. The communication at Bale was therefore, no 

 doubt, a repetition of the communication at Porrentruy made 

 eight days before, and the drawing of Agassiz was probably 

 done from memory after the drawing of Guyot. At least, I am at 

 ii loss to explain these seemingly independent communications in 

 any other way, nor will I even put the question, whether the 

 structure described was a vertical structure at all. I do not 

 suspect M. Agassiz of the reserve of having made no mention 

 at Porrentruy that the fact of Guyot had been ascertained by 

 himself, and then of having gone immediately to claim it as 

 original at Bale. I apprehend rather that the secretaries at Bale 

 (to whose MS. notes we are indebted alone for any knowledge 

 of this transaction, forgotten even by the principal actor in it) 

 had supposed, from M. Agassiz' verbal communication (de vive 



', that whilst relating what his friend M. Guyot had seen, 

 he was really giving an account of his own observations. 



1 mention this as the explanation most natural and most 



arable to M. Agassiz. But I would ask, if facts and theo- 

 ries are to be introduced thus into the history of science, where 

 is the palm of discovery ever to be bestowed? Surely a man 

 must have very little skill as an observer, and have exercised 

 still less thought to render his observations worth recording, if 

 he cannot recognize his own discovery when pointed out to him, 

 but is obliged to take the authority of his friends, at the end of 

 three years, that he ever knew it ! Such evidence is barely 

 tolerated in the case of posthumous claims. I suppose that 

 this is the first instance of its being gravely urged during life. 

 That 1 may not be imagined to have brought forward this claim 

 more strongly than its author has done, I quote from his letter 

 to in\ 



EXTRACT TWELFTH. Professor Agassiz to Professor Forbes. 



' M"\MEUR, Je recois la lettre suivante de M. Dubois de Montpe>eux 



. dont je crois devoir vous donner copic aim de vous prouver que de 



mon cote" j'avais aussi remarqu<$ des 1838, la structure lamellaire d'une partie 



des glaciers, alors m< UK- quefaute de plus aniples details, je n'en ai mentionne' 



dans mon livre que k-s appamiccs suprrliddlrs. i que 



croire avoir fait une de"couverte a ce sujet, ce u'a pu etre qu en 



mecomn reliant ce que j'ai pu vous dire 1 sur la profondeur a laquelle ccs lames 



dfoceiulriit, ct (|ii n'avairnt di- re-marquees mfu une faiblc profoiuk-ur avant 



.-uulcment dans le voismage des moraines. 



[Here follows the Letter, and Extract Eleventh.] 

 1 bee Extract Second for M. Agassiz' own account of what he /// id I 



