xlii PROCEEDINGS OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



scribes the various characteristic forms assumed by the granitic rocks 

 of the district, as well as the distribution of the primitive rocks 

 throughout the mountain chain. 



In 1818 he read at the meeting of the Helvetic Society of Natural 

 Sciences at Lausanne a memoir on the observations which he had made 

 on the nature and position of the gypsum of Bex. This work, pub- 

 lished in the following year*, led to a lively discussion between him- 

 self and Prof. Struve, then Inspector-General of the Mines and Salt- 

 works of the Canton de Vaud. This discussion led the way to a 

 more complete examination and knowledge of the other mineral for- 

 mations of the country and their relations to each other, followed up 

 by the discovery in 1822 of an enormous mass of rock-salt, thereby 

 securing the permanent existence of the salt-works of Bex, the value 

 and produce of which were greatly increased by the intelligent manage- 

 ment of M. de Charpentier. He gradually abolished the desultory 

 and imperfect mode of working which prevailed before his appoint- 

 ment, introducing a system of order and regularity in the employment 

 of the workmen, and developing the resources of the works in a 

 manner unknown to his predecessors. In 1823 he published his 

 ' Essai sur la Constitution . Geognostique des Pyrenees,' a work at 

 which he had been laboriously employed during his residence in those 

 mountains ; it is accompanied by a large geological map and a view 

 of the Pyrenees. At the same time he had prepared another im- 

 portant work entitled ' La Description des divers Procedes pour 

 traiter le Mineral de Per, confondus sous le nom de methode a la 

 Catalane.' 



But the work which has principally served to raise the character 

 of M. de Charpentier as a geologist and scientific observer, is his 

 researches respecting the older and more recent glaciers. As early 

 as 1815 the attention of M. de Charpentier and M. Venetz was 

 directed to the glacial question, and to the possibility of glaciers having 

 at a former period had a far greater extension down the Swiss valleys 

 than at present. M. de Charpentier became gradually convinced of 

 the truth of these views, and in 1835 he published in the *Annales des 

 Mines' his " Notice sur la cause probable du Transport des Blocs 

 Erratiques de la Suisse," in which the glacial agency is admitted. 

 Subsequently, the discoveries of his nephew, M. Blanchet, and the 

 investigations of Prof. Agassiz on the scratched and polished rocks 

 of the Jura determined M. de Charpentier to undertake a com- 

 plete investigation of the whole question. The result of this inquiry 

 was his work entitled * Essai sur les Glaciers, et sur le Terrain Erratique 

 du bassin du Rhone,' published in 1841. 



In these and other works M. de Charpentier first called attention 

 to the important phsenomena connected with glacial action ; and, 

 although the discoveries of subsequent observers have thrown doubt 

 on some of his conclusions, and led to modifications of others, geo- 

 logists are deeply indebted to him for pointing out many important 

 facts connected with the former extension of glaciers, for his ex- 

 planation of their efi^ects in wearing down and polishing the rocks 

 * See Meisner's Naturliistorischer Anzeiger, Berne. 



