70 



Louis Agassiz. 



land, which I can only explain by referring to cur- 

 rents of water." 



It should be remembered that later Buckland 

 became an enthusiastic convert to the young Swiss 

 teacher and his theories. 



The stroller through Princeton College will be told 

 that this institution of learning contains in its 

 museum five thousand specimens of rocks presented 

 by Professor Guyot. These were collected by him 

 when studying the glacier system with Agassiz and 

 Desor ; the work was carried on after a regularly or- 

 ganised plan, the idea being to publish the results of 

 each in a volume, which, however, was never carried 

 to completion. As with everything Agassiz at- 

 tempted, the unsolving of the secrets of the glaciers 

 was begun in a thorough and systematic manner. 

 The first important expedition was made in the 

 summer of 1839, Agassiz ascending the range of 

 Monte Rosa and Matterhorn, having as companions 

 M. Desor, M. Bettanier, and Studer, the geologist, 

 who went up the glacier a sceptic and came down a 

 thorough convert. The party encamped on the 

 edge of the river of ice and made daily excursions 

 to the different points of interest, so that by the end 

 of the season Agassiz had examined every glacier in 

 the vicinity, not to speak of those from the Monch, 

 the Jungfrau, the glacier of the Rhone and the Aar. 

 It was during this summer that he made the re- 

 markable discovery of the rate of speed attained by 

 these rivers of ice. In 1827 an investigator named 

 Hugi built a cabin upon the ice of the glacier at the 

 foot of the Abschwung. Agassiz visited the cabin 



