AMERICAN GEOLOGY DECADE OF 1*40-1*4!!. 



417 



Fig. 49.— Louis Agassiz. 



Louis Agassiz was born in Motier, Switzerland, in 1807, and came 

 into world-wide notoriety through his works on fossil fishes and his 

 enthusiastic exploitation of the glacial discoveries of Hugi, Venetz, 

 and Gharpentier, while in Neuchatel. He came to 

 sketch of Agassiz. America to better his finances in 1846, and after deliv- 

 ering courses of lectures before the Lowell Institute 

 in Boston and in other of the eastern cities, 

 accepted, in 1847, the professorship of geol- 

 ogy and zoology in Harvard University. 

 Agassiz was not, however, a geologist, and 

 his service to this branch of science after 

 coming to America was more as a teacher 

 and through arousing public interest than 

 by research. His enthusiasm was too great. 

 his staying power too slight; he was too 

 prone to jurapat conclusions to make a good 

 geologist, as shown in his hasty assumption 

 that the bowlders of decomposition found by 

 him in Brazil were drift bowlders and indica- 

 tive of a former glacial period in that latitude. 



The work begun by Jackson in Michigan 

 and under direction of the General Land Office in 1847 was. as already 

 shown, continued by Messrs. J. W. Foster and J. D." Whitney. Their 

 reports were issued in octavo form. Vol. I, on the copper lands, con- 

 stituting House Executive 



Foster and __ - _ 



Whitney's Work in Document No. *>'.*. first ses- 



Michigan, 1849-51. . 



sion. 1 hi rty- first Congress. 

 1850, and comprising 224 pages, with 12 

 plates and a facsimile of a map of Lake 

 Superior made by the Jesuit missionaries in 

 1671. Vol. II, or Part 2, on the iron region, 

 appeared as Senate Executive Document 

 No. 4, special session, March, 1851. This 

 comprised, all told, 40ti pages, with 33 plates. 

 A colored geological map of the area sur- 

 veyed accompanied the report. Some of the 

 more important items noted are as below: 

 They stated that Lake Superior occupies 

 an immense depression which has been for 

 the most part excavated out of the soft sandstone of the Potsdam age. 

 The configuration of that portion of the lake lying west of longitude 

 88 was deemed as due to two axes of elevation extending in parallel 

 lines from the northeast to the southwest, which upraised the sand- 

 stone, causing it to form a synclinal valley. 

 >at mos 1904 27 



Fig. 50.— John Wells Foster. 



