The Author of the Glacial Theory. 145 



every text-book known to me to Agassiz. It is this last 

 theory alone which I refer to. 



Before Agassiz wrote a line on the subject or had even 

 turned his attention to it, it had been propounded by two 

 scientific men in Germany, apparently working separately, 

 namely, Bernhardi and Schimper. It was the latter of these 

 to whom Agassiz owed his knowledge of it, and to whom 

 my remarks at Newcastle applied. The facts were pub- 

 lished in the Allgemeine Zeitung for February the 17th and 

 1 8th, 1887, where I have read them, and were made the 

 subject-matter of an article by Mr. G. P. Evans, in the 

 North American Review, vol. CXLV., pp. 94-97. Carl 

 Schimper, a botanist, and known as an authority upon 

 mosses, was born at Mannheim on February 15 th, 1803. 

 He was a precocious boy, and at Munich became the 

 favourite pupil of Schelling. In his various rambles in 

 Bavaria he had been attracted, as many others have been, 

 by the mysterious boulders scattered over the country, 

 which were a double subject of interest to him since they 

 were covered by lichens and mosses which were strange to him. 

 According to the testimony of Dr. Gustav Bezold, he gave 

 a series of lectures in the winter of 1835-36 at Munich to a 

 society of old friends there, including Schinzlein, afterwards 

 professor at Erlangen, Meyer the poet, Dobner, afterwards 

 professor at Aschaffenburg, etc., etc. Of these lectures Dr. 

 Bezold took notes. In them Schimper distinctly urged that 

 the blocks found in the Isar and Wiirm valleys and on the 

 Starnberg, "foundlings" he called them, had been trans- 

 ported thither not by rivers or water floods, but by ice, and 

 he invoked a long period of cold during which the erratics 

 were distributed. 



In July, 1836, Schimper took part in a gathering of 

 Swiss naturalists at Solothurm, when he met Charpentier 

 and Hugi, who had both written about the Swiss glaciers. 

 Agassiz was also there, but he was busy with his work 



