222 HISTORY OF GEOLOGY AND PAL/EONTOLOGY. 



gave confirmatory evidence in favour of the much grander 

 dimensions of the Alpine glaciers in a past age. In addition 

 to the morainic walls he referred to ice transport of the erratic 

 boulders dispersed in such numbers in Alpine valleys and 

 across the plains at the base of the Alps, and throughout 

 Northern Europe. 



Under the influence of Venetz, Charpentier (ante, p. 103), 

 director of salt-works and a personal friend of Venetz, became 

 deeply interested in glacial studies. Starting with the idea 

 that his friend had formed erroneous conceptions, Charpentier 

 soon became a convert, and declared himself openly in their 

 favour. He gave in 1834 a memorable address at Lucerne, in 

 which he showed that the large erratic blocks could not have 

 been transported by water; that the frequent scratches and 

 deep grooves on the rocks in Wallis are the work of glaciers; 

 that the occurrence of morainic walls and erratic blocks remote 

 from the present glaciers proved incontestably the former 

 presence of longer, wider ice-rivers. He thought the greater 

 glaciation of the Alps in a former epoch might be explained 

 by the greater height which the Alpine summits had once 

 attained. 



Enthusiasm for the subject was now thoroughly aroused in 

 Switzerland. Acting on the initiative of Charpentier, and 

 under his personal guidance, Louis Agassiz, in the summer of 

 1836, made his first glacial studies at Bex on the erratics in 

 the Rhone Valley, and explored the glaciers of Diablerets and 

 in the neighbourhood of Chamonix. His fellow-student and 

 friend, Karl Schimper, accompanied Agassiz on most of these 

 excursions. The genial Munich botanist had already made a 

 study of the erratics on the Bavarian plain at the base of the 

 Alps, and had explained them as masses transported from the 

 mountains by floating icebergs. 



Schimper, from numerous observations on the variation of 

 past floras and faunas, formulated his conception of alternating 

 epochs of desolation and re-animation. He identified the 

 youngest period of desolation as that during which the erratics 

 had been distributed, and regarded it as a great Ice Age. 

 Schimper embodied these ideas in courses of lectures delivered 

 in Munich to a small circle of friends. In the winter of 

 1836-37, Agassiz also gave a course of lectures at Neuchatel 

 on glaciers and the Ice Age, and copies of an ode written by 

 Schimper on the Ice Age were distributed by the poet 



