Arnold Guyot. 367 



original conclusions, except on one point ; and chiefly because 

 of the want of proper publication.* 



Having attended at Berlin, the lectures of Dove on Physics 

 and Meteorology, and those of Eitter on Physical Geography, 

 Guyot knew, when he went to the mountains, what to look for 

 in case the glaciers were great flowing streams of ice, as had 

 often been supposed ; he knew that the flow of a stream is 

 retarded along the sides and bottom by friction ; and he nat- 

 urally looked also for something in the encounter of the glacier 

 with rocks answering to molecular displacement. Hence, in 

 his six weeks of observations on the glaciers, he reached, with- 

 out waste of time, good conclusions — the conclusions of a 

 physical geographer. His investigation did not enable him to 

 appreciate the interior fracturing that works along with molec- 

 ular displacement in the flow of the ice, but his conclusion 

 was still far in the right direction, and decisive against the 

 hypothesis he opposed. That he did not continue his study of 

 the glaciers to thoroughly established results was owing to his 

 yielding the subject afterward to Agassiz. Fidelity to his 

 friend and his volunteered agreement curbed in and silenced 



* Rendu's " Theorie des Glaciers de la Savoie " was published in 1841 (Mem. 

 Soc. Roy. Savoie, Ckambery, vol. x). Forbes's first letter from the Alps, announc- 

 ing his discovery in August, 1841, of the ''blue bands" in the Aar glacier, was 

 communicated to the Royal Society of Edinburgh, Dec. 6, 1841, and published in 

 January in Jameson's N. Phil. J., vol. xxxii, 1842. Agassiz's first work on gla- 

 ciers, " Etudes sur les Glaciers" was published in 1840. Neither of these publica- 

 tions mentions Guyot or his observations. 



Guyot's communication of 1841, published in the Altdorf Verhandlungen, was 

 drawn out by a discussion between Forbes and Agassiz relating to priority as to 

 observations on the blue bands, and it was made just five days before Forbes's 

 first letter was read in Edinburgh. Agassiz claimed credit for Guyot at the meet- 

 ing in ] 841 , as a set off against Forbes's claim, and, again, in the N. Phil. Journ., 

 xxxiii, 265, 1843. Forbes, in the following volume of that Journal, xxxiv, 145, 

 1843, gives Guyot credit for original discovery as regards the "blue bands" and 

 speaks of his corresponding with him on the subject ; and he repeats the acknowl- 

 edgment to the "ingenious Professor of Neuchatel," in his Travels through the 

 Alps of Savoy, 1843 (1st edit.) and 1845 (2d edit.), page 28. Desor in the same 

 Journal, xxxv, 308, 1843, in a paper on Agassiz's recent glacier researches, intro- 

 duces a translation of Guyot's account of the banded structure, but cuts it short 

 at the words " opposite sides of a transverse valley," leaving off the explanatory 

 remarks which follow. 



Tyndall, in his "Forms of Water" (1872, p. 183) gives Guyot credit for priority, 

 and he cites, both in this work and in his earlier "Glaciers of the Alps" (1856), 

 a translation of Guyot's account, ending it a sentence short of Desor's citation, 

 with the words "certain calcareous slates," in place of Guyot's "certain schistose 

 limestones;" and, on page 187 of "The Forms of Water," not knowing all of 

 Guyot's explanations, he does him more than credit (admitting Tyndall's view 

 to be established) in saying that he " threw oat an exceedingly sagacious hint when 

 he compared the veined structure to the cleavage of slate rocks :" for the comparison 

 in Guyot's paper implies rather true stratification from deposition. The first detailed 

 comparison of the " blue bands" to slaty cleavage, in structure, position and origin, 

 appears to have been made by Professor Henry D. Rogers, at the Cambridge meeting 

 of the American Association in 1 849 (Proc. Am. Assoc, ii, 181). But Rogers attrib- 

 uted the structure in both to conditions of temperature, and not, like Tyndall, to 

 pressure. 



