Charles Schuchert — Historical Geology, 1818-1918. 87 



digested the whole doctrine of the glaciers in a few 

 weeks. ' ' 



In July, 1837, Agassiz presented as his presidential 

 address before the Helvetic Society his memorable "Dis- 

 conrs de Neuchatel," which was "the starting point of 

 all that has been written on the Ice-age, ' ' — a term coined 

 at the time by his friend Schimper, a botanist. The first 

 part of this address is reprinted in French in Marcou's 

 book on Agassiz. The address was received with aston- 

 ishment, mnch incrednlity, and indifference. Among the 

 listeners was the great German geologist Von Bnch, who 

 "was horrified, and with his hands raised towards the 

 sky, and his head bowed to the distant Bernese Alps, 

 exclaimed: "0 Sancte de Sanssnre, ora pro nobis!" 

 Even De Charpentier "was not gratified to see his glacial 

 theory mixed with rather uncalled for biological prob- 

 lems, the connection of which with the glacial age was 

 more than problematic. ' ' Agassiz was then a Cuvierian 

 catastrophist and creationist, and advanced the idea of 

 a series of glacial ages to explain the destruction of the 

 geologic succession o f faunas ! Curiously, this theory 

 was at once accepted by the American paleontologist 

 T. A. Conrad (35, 239, 1839). 



The classics in glacial geology are Agassiz 's Etudes 

 sur les Glaciers, 1840, and De Charpentier ? s Essai sur les 

 Glaciers, 1841. Of the latter book, Marcou states that 

 it has been said: "It is impossible to be truly a geologist 

 without having read and studied it." In the English 

 language there is Tyndall's Glaciers of the Alps, 1860. 



The progress of the ideas in regard to Pleistocene 

 glaciation is presented in the following chapter of this 

 number by H. E. Gregory. 



Older Glacial Climates. — Hardly had the Pleistocene 

 glacial climate been proved, when geologists began to 

 point out the possibility of even earlier ones. An enthu- 

 siastic Scotch writer, Sir Andrew Eamsay, in 1855 

 described certain late Paleozoic conglomerates of middle 

 England, which he said were of glacial origin, but his 

 evidence, though never completely gainsaid, has not been 

 generally accepted. In the following year, an English- 

 man, Doctor W. T. Blanford, said that the Talchir con- 

 glomerates of central and southern India were of glacial 

 origin, and since then the evidence for a Permian glacial 

 climate has been steadily accumulating. Africa is the 



