July 23, 1886. J 



SCIENCE, 



79 



discourse at Neuchatel, — a sufficient answer to the 

 claims "that Guyot made a scientific examination 

 of the Alpine glaciers two years before they were 

 studied by Agassiz " 



On the 5th of September, Agassiz and Guyot were 

 present at the Eeunion extraordinaire de la Societe 

 geologique de France a, Porrentruy ; and at the meet- 

 ing of the 6th of September we read the following 

 remarks : — 



" M. Agassiz presente ^ la societe ses observations 

 sur les glaciers, d'ou il deduit d'importantes conse- 

 quences geogeniques relativement aux blocs erra- 

 tiques. . . . M. Guyot ajoute aux observations de 

 M. Agassiz de nouvelles considerations " {Bull. soc. 

 geol , vol. ix. p. 407). 



That is all. Guyot did not read a manuscript, but 

 offered only a few verbal observations. He was not 

 then a member of the society; and his remarks passed 

 off unnoticed, although geologists were present, well 

 prepared to discuss any point relating to glaciers, — 

 Agassiz, Jean de Charpentier, Bernai'd Studer, Thur- 

 mann. Max Braun, Lardy, Buckland, d'Onialius, Ni- 

 colet, and finally Renoir and Leblanc, who announced 

 at that meeting their discoveries of old glaciers in the 

 Vosges. 



On the contrary, Agassiz's communication at- 

 tracted much attention, and was the subject of many 

 discussions and commentaries. Agassiz, strengthened 

 and animated by the presence of de Charpentier, sur- 

 passed himself in his clear and trenchant exposition 

 of the ' glacial theory.' The impression left on all 

 those who were present at the Porrentruy meeting 

 was such, that years after, several of them told me 

 that Agassiz was absolutely irresistible, and won the 

 admiration even of his strongest opponent there, 

 Bernard Studer. 



Neither Agassiz nor Guyot gave their notes to be 

 printed ; and it was almost one year later that Agas- 

 siz's memoir, ' Sur les glaciers,' was deposited at the 

 ' secretariat ' of the Geological society at Paris. It 

 was published at the end of volume ix. p. 413, as late 

 as the spring of 1840. The same memoir appeared 

 first in the Bibliotheque univ. de Geneve (tome xx. 

 p. 382) in December, 1839 ; and it was reprinted in 

 1844, at the head of ' Excursions et sejours dans les 

 glaciers,' etc., by E. Desor. 



Many years after the death of Agassiz, and one 

 year after the death of Desor, Professor Guyot 

 claimed that he wrote Agassiz's memoir, and added 

 that he was unable to finish the writing of his own 

 memoir by an ' indisposition qui dura jusque tard 

 dans Vite (1839).' Guyot returned to Neuchatel, 

 however, in good health, in the fall of 1839 ; and, if 

 his memoir remained inedit, it was because he did 

 not think his maiden notice was of sufficient value 

 for publication ; for both the Bulletin of the geological 

 society and the Bibliotheque universelle were open to 

 him, and ready to accept his remarks. 



James D. Forbes having claimed the discoveiy ' of 

 ribboned structure ' of the ice of glaciers, Agassiz took 

 from Guyot's notes his remarks, "sur la structure 

 lamellaire de la glace du glacier pres du sommet du 

 Gries," and published them in a pamphlet dated 11 

 April, 1842, Neuchatel. At the same time Agassiz 

 begged Guyot to put his manuscript in the ' archives ' 

 of the Societe des sciences naturelles de Neuchatel. 

 This was done, and from that date the record of the 

 existence of Guyot's notes is indisputable. Unhap- 

 pily they were not published ; and Guyot took them 

 back in 1848, and carried them to America, whence. 



in April, 1883, he sent them again to Neuchatel, 

 where they were finally printed in the Bulletin 

 Soc. sc. naturelles (tome xiii. p. 156), the 26th of 

 April, 1883. 



It is impossible not to feel an uncertainty as to the 

 primordial communication of Professor Guyot at 

 Porrentruy. when we think of the delays in its publi- 

 cation, the travelling about, and the incompleteness 

 of the notes. This feeling is increased by a remark 

 of his widow, who says that Guyot did not send back 

 to Neuchatel all the original manuscript, a part hav- 

 ing been left in her hands {I'he American journal 

 of science. May, 1886, p. 366). 



But accepting the Neuchatel memoir of 1883 as 

 correct, its scientific value is very small, and hardly 

 justifies its publication. All that was truly of value 

 was put in Agassiz's reply to Forbes ; and even that 

 is of small importance, considering that Rendu 

 noticed more in detail the same phenomenon of 

 veined structure of the ice, in his ' Tbeorie des 

 glaciers de la Savoie,' published during the summer 

 of 1840 ; and that Hugi, as far back as 1830, sig- 

 nalized the same phenomenon. 



Accompanying his notes by a letter to M. Louis 

 Coulon, president of the Neuchatel society. Profes- 

 sor Guyot claims that he has discovered not only ' la 

 structure lamellaire de la glace des glaciers,'' but also 

 the different modes of progression of the glaciers, the 

 inclination of the beds at the end of glaciers, and the 

 disposition of 'crevasses en eventail.^ 



These facts were known before, and were discussed 

 aluiost daily in the house of de Charpentier, as is 

 proved in the book of de Charpentier on the glaciers. 

 Besides, Griiaer, Hugi, Rendu, Bischof, and others 

 have previously signalized the same facts. 



Finally, Prof. Guyot, at the end of his letter to M. 

 Coulon, makes statements entirely at variance with 

 fact in regai'd to ' la distribution des blocs erratiques.'' 

 For instance, he says, "The erratic map of the old 

 glacier of the Rhone, published by de Charpentier 

 (1840), stops it at Nyon, when by my latter observa- 

 tions I extended it far beyond Geneva to the Mont 

 de Sion." Now, de Charpentier's map ' du terrain 

 erratique de la vallee du Rhone,^ accompanying his 

 celebrated book, does not stop the glacier of the 

 Rhone at Nyon, but close to the city of Geneva, 

 twenty miles farther south. As to bowlders of the 

 Rhone valley as far as Mont de Sion, they have been 

 described there by J. A. Deluc anterior to 1840 ; and 

 R.Blauchet, in his ' Carte du glacier du Rhone ' (Lau- 

 sanne, 1844), extends the Rhone glacier as far as la 

 Perte du Rhone, with a large moraine on the Mont 

 de Sion. 



From 1840 to 1847, Guyot, with great industry and 

 perseverance, made a hypsometrical survey of the 

 positions of the bowlders in seven of the erratic 

 basins round the central Alps. Unhappily he only 

 partially published his researches, in the Bulletin des 

 sc. nat. de Neuchatel, without the map showing the 

 distribution of those bowlders ; reserving it, as he 

 says, for an ulterior publication, in collaboration with 

 Agassiz and Desor, which was never completed. If 

 Guyot's map had been published then, it would have 

 been an important contribution to the Alpine erratic 

 phenomena. However, a great part of it — more 

 than two-thirds at least — was anticipated by the 

 issue in 1845, at Winterthur, of an anonymous map 

 of the old glaciers of the central Alps, showing the 

 extent of the ancient glaciers of the Arve, Rhone, 

 Aar, Reuss, Linth, and Rhine, with their lateral and 



