78 



8CIE]^CE. 



[Vol. VIII., .No. 181 



tweon 1829 and 1834. Being twenty years older 

 than Agassiz, de Charpentier, then aged 6fty-two, 

 celebrated as one of the best observers ia geology, 

 conchology. and botany, was considered as the first 

 naturalist then living in Switzerland. Savants from 

 any part of the world, caUing on him, received 

 always a very amiable and generous hospitality. His 

 beautiful and rich collections were open to all ; and 

 many who came there for only a passing call re- 

 mained weeks and even months. 



Agassiz had that magnetic power which attracted 

 every one to him : de Charpentier was as well gifted, 

 being the most charming and spiritual converser im- 

 aginable. Besides, de Charpentier was without ambi- 

 tion, a true ' scientific epicurean,' as he was called. 

 Agassiz, with his power of quick perception, his ex- 

 cellent memory, his perspicacity and acuteness, his 

 way of classifying, judging, and marshalling facts, 

 quickly learned the whole mass of irresistible argu- 

 ments collected patiently during seven years by de 

 Charpentier and Venetz ; and with that faculty of 

 assimilation which he possessed in such a wonderful 

 degree, and his insatiable appetite, he digested the 

 whole doctrine of the glaciers. Then once in posses- 

 sion of that new and certainly very original and 

 attractive tool, Agassiz, with his extraordinary imagi- 

 native power, saw that the phenomenon of the ex- 

 tension of old glaciers was not to be confined to the 

 Ehone valley, but must be general, and was a special 

 period in the history of the earth, during which cold 

 prevailed all over the world. In a word, Agassiz, 

 with his far-reaching thouehts, added an entirely 

 unexpected and then generally very unwelcome step 

 to the different periods which the earth has passed 

 through, — the 'ice age.' 



Every one knows with what rapidity the mere sug- 

 gestion — some may call it the inspiration of genius 



— made by Agassiz, in his celebrated ' Discours d'ou- 

 verture' before the meeting of the Swiss naturalists 

 at Neuchatel in 1837, became an accepted truth. 

 Discovery after discovery came in rapid succession, 



— first in the Vosges in 1838 ; then in Scotland, Eng- 

 land, Ireland, the Pyrenees, the Jura, Scandinavia, 

 Finland, Eussia, the Ural Mountains, Auvergne, 

 Britanny, the Sierra Nevada of Spain, the Atlas in 

 Morocco, Corsica, the Balkans, Lebanon and Syria, 

 the Caucasus, the Himalaya, Altai, the Thian-Shan, 

 the Kuen-Lun, the Kamtchatka. Japan, Alaska, 

 British Columbia, Washington Territory, Oregon, 

 California, the Rocky Mountains, all the eastern part 

 of Canada and the United States as far as New Jer- 

 sey and Kentucky, Central America, Colombia, Ec- 

 uador, Peru, Chili, the Straits of Magellan, New Zea- 

 land, and even very strong suspicions of the exist- 

 ence of ancient glaciers iu Brazil, in Guinea (Gold 

 Coast), and in Australia. What splendid record ! and 

 almost all during the lifetime of Agassiz ; himself 

 having the honor to establish the existence of 

 ancient glaciers in Scotland and England, in the 

 eastern part of the United States, in the Straits of 

 Magellan, in Chili, and probably in Brazil. 



But that is not all. Admitting that Agassiz h^-= " 

 little too quickly digested and assimilated the glacial 

 theory of de Charpentier and Venetz, we can say now 

 with no less truth that his powerful intervention has 

 greatly advanced the time of the acceptance of that 

 theory, by thirty years at least, and that besides his 

 great discovery of the glacial epoch or ice age, which 

 is unquestionably his own, Agassiz has done more to 

 make known the glaciers than any one else ; although 



he was not a physicist, and his explanations were 

 faulty and inaccurate on many points. 



These explanations and appreciations are rendered 

 necessary by criticisms and strictures on the part 

 taken by Agassiz, and even entire omission of his 

 name ; his successor at Harvard college having de- 

 nied in toto. in a publication founded by Agassiz, — 

 ' The memoirs of the Museum of comparative zoology,' ^ 

 — his great discovery of the ' ice age,' but having, 

 more than that, ignored him altogether as the dis- 

 coverer of the existence of ancient glaciers in the 

 British Dominions, in New England and New York, 

 in Brazil, in the Straits of Magellan, and in Chili. 



On the other hand, some have gone too far in their 

 eulogies. The part taken by Agassiz is grand and 

 beautiful enough, without diminishing the great dis- 

 coveries of Venetz and de Charpentier, both of whom 

 were his teachers : for Agassiz was not alone in his 

 visits at the house of ' des Devens ' in 1836 ; and all 

 the explanations given by de Charpentier, and the 

 excursions to the erratic bowlders, moraines, and 

 glaciers, were made in company with several Swiss 

 savants, — Venetz, Lardy, Mousson, Thomas, and 

 Dr. H. Lebert. This last celebrated anatomist and 

 naturalist has given his charming impression and 

 souvenirs in his too short but excellent biography of 

 Jean de Charpentier, read at Bex (Actes de la Soc. 

 Helv. des sc. natur., Aug., 1877). 



To be sure, Agassiz manifested his gratitude for 

 the teaching of de Charpentier and Venetz in his 

 ' Etudes sur les glaciers ' (1840), dedicated on the first 

 page, "A M. Venetz, ingenieur des ponts et chaussees 

 au canton de Vaud, et ^ M. J. de Charpentier, direc- 

 teur des mines de Bex." De Charpentier thanked him 

 in his name and also in the name of Venetz, in the 

 ' preface ' of his ' Essai sur les glaciers ' (October, 

 1840), a few days after Agassiz's work reached him 

 at Bex. Notwithstanding this exchange of courte- 

 sies, an estrangement followed, due mainly to the in- 

 terference of Agassiz's personal friends and collabo- 

 rators ; and after 1840 the friendship, or at least the 

 relations, between de Charpentier and Agassiz, ceased 

 entirely. 



One more of the erroneous notices on glaciers and 

 glacialists is in Science of April 30, 1886. At p. 385 

 we read, " Professor Dana's memoir gave an account 

 of Guyot's early life which will be new to many of his 

 American friends, and particularly called attention 

 to the fact that Guyot had made a scientific exami- 

 nation of the Alpine glaciers two years before they 

 were studied by Agassiz, and anticipated a number 

 of his most important conclusions. In a paper read 

 then before the Helvetic society, but never printed 

 until 1883, Guyot pointed out that the upper portion 

 of the glacier moves faster than the lower, that the 

 middle moves faster than the sides," etc. It is diffi- 

 cult to imagine a more erroneous and unjust state- 

 ment. 



At Princeton Guyot was long isolated from inter- 

 course with Swiss naturalists ; and at the close of his 

 life, while suffering under the malady which proved 

 fatal in 1884, he put forth claims of doubtful value. 

 These are the facts. 



In 1838, Guyot, stimulated byAgassiz's constant con- 

 versation on the glaciers, passed five weeks among the 

 glaciers of the Bernese Oberland and the Upper Va- 

 lais. It was two years after Agassiz's study of the 

 glaciers under de Charpentier, and one year after his 



The climatic changes of later geological times. By J. D- 

 Whitney. Cambridge, 1680-82. 4°. 



