A Glacier Hunt 



69 



pleasure trips, for he was often accompanied by his 

 friends and pupils, were fruitful in results, and 

 demonstrated to Agassiz that he was correct in his 

 original surmises. He was at this time in the full 

 flush of vigorous manhood ; few of his companions 

 could compete with him in physical endurance, and 

 many a wild race he led his friends Dinkel and M. 

 Desor, who became equally interested in the history 

 of glaciers. 



The new study brought him another friend, 

 Arnold Guyot, who was from this time on his col- 

 league. By a special agreement these friends took 

 up this great subject of glaciers together. In 1838 

 we find Guyot in the Central Alps, watching the 

 movement of glaciers and observing the structure of 

 the great mass, while Agassiz was walking over the 

 rough country in the Bernese Oberland, Chamounix 

 and Haut Valais, studying the glaciers of ancient 

 days when they covered the land. At the end of 

 these delightful expeditions the two friends met at 

 the meeting of the Geological Society of France, in 

 the town of Porrentruy, and discussed before other 

 savants the results of their season's work, encounter- 

 ing no little opposition, as we may imagine, as the 

 new theories were by no means received with favour. 

 Buckland, who was also a student of glaciers at this 

 time, wrote : 



" I am sorry that I cannot entirely adopt the new 

 theory you advocate to explain transported blocks 

 by moraines ; for supposing it adequate to explain 

 the phenomena of Switzerland, it would not apply 

 to the granite blocks and transported gravel of Eng- 



