The Agassiz Memorials. 245 



and again tracked the steps of glaciers all over the 

 surface of New England, and again astonished the 

 world by announcing that all the northern portions 

 of the United States were also moulded beneath an 

 ice-sheet. It is unnecessary to trace the extension 

 of this idea from country to country ; suffice it to 

 say, that it was soon recognised that there was a 

 glacial epoch not for Switzerland only, but for the 

 whole earth. Before Agassiz, the study of glaciers 

 was the study of nice questions in physics, and of 

 interest principally to special physicists. Agassiz 

 transferred the whole subject into the broad domain 

 of geology, and gave it a far deeper, broader, and 

 more general interest. The result was not only a 

 powerful impulse to the study of glaciers, but a 

 flood of light shed upon the whole later geological 

 history of our earth, and thus an enormous impulse 

 to geology also. 



But I said that Agassiz was a great reformer in 

 zoology also — that he was also, if not the first intro- 

 ducer, at least the perfecter of the great method of 

 organic science. This must ever remain the chiefest 

 glory of Agassiz. Yes, far greater than all his great 

 works in zoology — as great as these are, a monument 

 of industry and genius — far greater than these is the 

 method which underlies them, and which has impreg- 

 nated all modern zoology. 



Let me pause a moment, in deference to the intel- 

 ligent but unscientific of this audience, to explain 

 the meaning and show the power of scientific meth- 

 ods. Scientific methods bear the same relation to 

 intellectual progress which machines, instruments, 



