362 Arnold Guyot. 



into a common life. But, for Ritter, that organism of the globe 

 comprises not nature only ; it includes man, and with man, the 

 moral and intellectual life." " None before him perceived so 

 clearly the hidden but strong ties which mutually bind man to 

 nature; those close and fruitful relations between man and his 

 dwelling-place, between a continent and its inhabitants, between 

 a country and the people which hold it as its share of the conti- 

 nent ; those influences which stamp the races and nations each 

 with a character of their own, never to be effaced during the 

 long period of their existence." 



We have here ideas that took, in Guyot, a still larger 

 expansion. 



Guyot derived great profit also from the works and the 

 friendship of Humboldt, His address at the Humboldt Com- 

 memoration of the American Geographical Society, in 1859, is 

 a beautiful tribute to this model student of nature.* 



The five years of study at the Berlin University terminated 

 with an examination which brought him the degree of Doctor 

 of Philosophy. His graduating thesis, written in Latin, as was 

 then the rule, was on "the Natural Classification of Lakes." 



To Paris, the Pyrenees, Italy, etc., 1835 to 1839. — From Berlin, 

 Guyot, in his 28th year — June of 1835 — went to Paris to take 

 charge of the education of the sons of Count de Pourtales- 

 Gorgier, and continued with the family four years. Letters of 

 introduction from Humboldt led to much intercourse with 

 Brongniart and other savants of the great city. For the sum- 

 mer he accompanied the family to Eaux Bonnes in the Pyr- 

 enees. While there he made ascents of the higher peaks, and 

 took excursions in various directions — to the amphitheater of 

 Gavarnie, to the borders of Spain by the Pont d'Espagne and 

 the pass beyond, to the valley of the Eaux Chaudes, etc. — in 

 order to study the features and flora and compare the moun- 

 tains in these respects with the Alps. In the autumn he went, 

 with his pupils, to Belgium, Holland and the Rhine, to study 

 the characteristic features of these countries. The following 

 year he visited Pisa, and there, besides enjoying the new scenes, 

 made various barometrical measurements, determining the ele- 

 vation of the observatory at Florence, and of other points. 



Trip to the Glaciers in 1838. — In the spring of 1838, Agassiz 

 found Guyot still at Paris. During the summer preceding 

 Agassiz had startled the scientific world by his declarations as 

 to a universal Glacial era, contained in a paper read before the 

 Helvetic Society of Natural Sciences assembled at Neuchatel. 

 His work in 1837 — prompted in 1836 by Charpentier's discov- 

 eries proving the fact of a former epoch of immense glaciers in 



* Journal of the American Geographical Society, i, 242, October, 1859. 



