142 
in Connecticut, whose first public communication on the sub- 
ject appeared in the tenth volume of Silliman’s Journal, in 
1826, and whose letter to Dr. Hitchcock, in 1837, the latter 
never answered, but kept for six years among his papers, 
and only sent it for publication in the Journal in 1843, the 
year following that of Murchison’s public indorsement of 
Mr. Dobson’s views, as “a short, clear, and modest state- 
ment of the best glacial theory, — the essence of the modi- 
fied glacial theory at which geologists (says Murchison) 
have arrived after so much debate.” Mr. Dobson described 
certain red sandstone boulders, too angular to have been 
rolled by floods, and scratched upon their inner sides, “as 
having been dragged over rocks and gravelly earth in one 
steady position” ; adding, “I think we cannot account for 
these appearances unless we call in the aid of ice as well as 
water, supposing that they have been worn by being sus- 
pended, and carried in ice over rocks and earth under 
water.” 
These views of Mr. Dobson had been twenty years on 
record, but neglected, when they were thus quoted and com- 
plimented by the highest authority in Great Britain. It 
was at one of those epochs of excitement which occur peri- 
odically in the history of every science. Agassiz had ap- 
peared at Edinburgh; and, for him to come was to see and 
conquer. Neither Murchison nor Lyell at that time 
accepted his glacial hypothesis in its broad applications to 
the circumpolar earth and the entire drift. But from that 
day onward the younger geologists, with Ramsay at their 
head, worked at it con amore, and strengthened its claims to 
acceptation by annual fresh discoveries; but they have 
oe finished by assigning to it such incredible omnipotence, 
_ Claiming for it such impossible activity, as its great master 
has never auhorized. So that its reputation has peer ani 
