AGASSLZ AND BUCKLAND 247 



How justly Buckland estimated the importance of this 

 great discovery is shown by notes in his handwriting, 

 that were probably used to assist him in one of those 

 remarkable speeches the echoes of which still reverberate 

 in our time. In one he says: "For some time to come 

 the Glacial Theory must occupy a prominent place in 

 Geological Investigation. The Subject appears to me 

 the most important that has been put forth since the 

 propounding of the Huttonian Theory : and the surface 

 of the whole Globe must be examined afresh with the 

 View of ascertaining how far the Effect of Glaciers and 

 Ice-bergs and of Floods produced by melting ice and 

 snow can be found and identified with the actual effects 

 of Ice and Snow in our present Polar and Alpine 

 Regions." This prediction has been verified ; even 

 now, fifty years after these words were uttered, observers 

 are still engaged in the investigation of glacial phenomena ; 

 the subject still occupies as prominent a place as it did 

 then, and promises to do so for an indefinite time yet 

 to come. In another note Buckland comments on " The 

 vast field of new Enquiry which the introduction of the 

 Glacial period between our Epoch and the Newest 

 Tertiary opens to the Geological Enquiry. The fact 

 of the Greater Part of Europe and North America having 

 for many years been sealed up under a cover of frozen 

 Snow converted to the state of Glaciers is certain. . . . 

 Thus the flood that caused the Diluvium which in my 

 ' Bridgewater Treatise ' I have put back to the latest 

 of the many Geological Deluges, was probably due to 

 the melting of the Ice. The details of this Ice flood will 

 fill a Volume and will constitute Vol. II. of my ' Reliquiae 

 Diluvianae and Glaciales,' which for fifteen years has 

 been retarded for lack of the grand key which Agassiz 

 has supplied in his 'Etudes des Glaciers.'" 



Thus Buckland courageously recanted his earlier opinions 



