330 LOUIS AGASSIZ. 



and twenty-five feet into a glacial well, to investi- 

 gate its formation. 



All Europe was becoming interested in glaciers. 

 Edward Forbes wrote from Edinburgh : " You have 

 made all the geologists glacier-mad here, and they 

 are turning Great Britain into an ice-house." Dar- 

 win was deeply interested. He wrote from North 

 Wales : " The valley about here and the site of 

 the inn at which I am now writing must once have 

 been covered by at least eight hundred or one 

 thousand feet in thickness of solid ice ! Eleven 

 years ago I spent a whole day in the valley where 

 yesterday everything but the ice of the glaciers 

 was palpably clear to me, and I then saw nothing 

 but plain water and bare rock." 



Agassiz now began work on his " Nomenclator 

 Zoologicus," and his " Bibliographia Zoologiae et 

 Geologise," the former comprising " an enumera- 

 tion of all the genera of the animal kingdom, with 

 the etymology of their names, the names of those 

 who had first proposed them, and the date of 

 their publication." The latter contained a list of 

 all the authors named in the Nomenclator, with 

 notices of their works. This was published by the 

 Royal Society in England, in 1848, the expense be- 

 ing too great for one person. 



In 1843 the "Fossil Fishes," in five large 

 volumes, was completed, and the following year 

 his "Monograph on the Fossil Fishes of the Old 

 Bed Sandstone, or the Devonian System of Great 

 Britain and Russia," was published, a large volume 



