DYNAMICAL GEOLOGY. 22J 



himself to the members of Agassiz' class. In that poem, 

 which was re-published in 1841, the epoch of ice was thus 

 depicted : 



" Ice of the Past ! of an Age when Frost 

 In its stern clasp held the lands of the South, 

 Dressed with its mantle of desolate white 

 Mountains and forests, fair valleys and lakes ! " 



In July 1837, Agassiz 1 laid a report of his glacier studies 

 before the Annual Congress of Swiss Scientists, in which he 

 expressed his view that a strong fall of temperature had taken 



1 Louis Jean Rudolph Agassiz, the son of a Swiss Protestant pastor, 

 was born 28th May 1807 at Motiers, on the Murten Lake (Canton 

 Waadt). He was educated first at the academy of Lausanne, and later 

 studied Medicine and the Natural Sciences at Zurich, Heidelberg, and 

 Munich. While still a student he occupied himself with the study of 

 recent and fossil fishes, and after the publication of the first part of his 

 great work on Fossil Fishes he came into personal relations with Cuvier 

 and Humboldt in Paris. In 1832 the already world-renowned young 

 naturalist was appointed Professor at the Academy of Neuchatel, and 

 made it an active centre of scientific investigation. In 1834 he paid a visit 

 to England for the purpose of studying the British fossil fishes, and in the 

 same year received from the Geological Society the Wollaston medal. In 

 the summer of 1836 he began his glacial studies under Charpentier's 

 direction, and pursued them for ten years with striking success in the Swiss 

 Alps, in Great Britain, and afterwards in North and South America. In 

 1846 he crossed the Atlantic and delivered courses of lectures in various 

 towns, and was appointed Professor of Zoology and Geology in the 

 University of Cambridge, U.S.A., in 1847. He went as Professor of 

 Comparative Anatomy to Charleston in 1851, but returned in 1853 to 

 Cambridge. In 1859, he founded there, with pecuniary aid from private 

 individuals and also from the State, the fine Museum of Comparative 

 Zoology. His public lectures, also the instruction he gave at Harvard 

 College, his numerous publications, exhibited such an almost unique 

 activity as to procure him great popularity. His interest in his magnificent 

 Museum, the opportunities to follow his zoological studies, and to take 

 part in various marine expeditions which his residence near the sea 

 procured him, and, not least, the enthusiastic reception which he had 

 received in North America, and the influence he could have there on the 

 whole development of scientific life, induced Agassiz to refuse many 

 tempting offers to return to his native land, and also the offer of an 

 appointment in Paris as a Professor in the Museum. He became a 

 naturalised American, and died in Cambridge, Mass., on the I4th December 

 1873. Besides his epoch-making work on fossil fishes and his glacial studies, 

 Agassiz published valuable monographs on fossil and recent Echinids and 

 Molluscs, and numerous zoological works. In 1868 a report on his 

 journey to Brazil appeared, and was followed in 1871 by another on a 

 deep-sea investigation between Cape Horn and California. To the last 

 Agassiz combated Darwin's theory of evolution. 



