324 Association of American Gieologists and Naturalists. 
valleys. Until full observation was made of the facts with this 
point in view, we could arrive at no valuable general conclusions. 
An animated and pleasing debate then ensued between Prof. 
Hitchcock, Mr. Nicollet, Mr. Redfield, and the Chair. 
Prof. Hitchcock remarked that so disastrous had been his experience 
in respect to the glacial theory of Agassiz, that he was almost afraid to 
say any thing more on the subject. His views had been so much mis- 
understood on both sides of the Atlantic, that he was satisfied that the 
fault lay in the language which he had used on former occasions. He 
had been supposed to be an advocate for the unmodified glacial theory. 
But if he could trust his own consciousness he never had been a be- 
liever in it. The views which he presented in his paper on the phe- 
nomena of drift in North America, read to this Association last year 
and now published in their Transactions, are essentially the same as 
those which he held when he gave his anniversary address before this 
body in Philadelphia: and those views he certainly stated in that ad- 
dress. Nay, he invented a new term, viz. glacio-aqueous, to express 
the final conclusions of his mind on the subject. By this term he meant 
to say that the phenomena of drift were the result of the joint action 
of ice and water, without saying which of these agents had exerted the 
greatest influence. But whether that glacio-aqueous action had been 
the result of the enormous accumulation of glaciers according to Agas- 
siz, or from floating icebergs while northern countries were yet beneath 
the ocean according to Lyell and Murchison, or of the upheaving of 
the Arctic Ocean whereby its aqueo-glacial contents were precipi- 
tated southward according to De la Beche, he had not then made up his 
mind nor has he yet made it up. The Etudes sur les Glaciers of Agas- 
siz did indeed throw a flood of light into his mind, by showing how (if 
that writer has rightly interpreted the phenomena of glaciers) moving 
ice could produce such effects as are connected with drift. It did seem 
to him to have introduced a new element into the dynamics of drift, and 
he expressed his strong admiration of the labors of the distinguished pro- 
fessor of Neuchatel, though he certainly never meant to adopt his views 
in full: and in saying that the fundamental principle of Agassiz’s the- 
ory seemed to him to be true, he meant only that ice and water had 
been the agents employed in producing the phenomena of drift, for 
he understood the glacial theory to require both these agencies. Indeed 
the melting away of the vast accumulations of ice around the poles, 
which this theory supposes to have been done suddenly, must have pro- 
duced southerly currents and transported icebergs in that direction in 
vast quantities. 
