1 58 The American Geologist. September, isus 
"Professor Hitchcock remarked that so disastrous had been his 
experience in respect to the glacial theory of Agassiz that he was 
almost afraid to say anything more on the subject He 
had been supposed to be an advocate for the unmodified glacial theory. 
But if he could trust his own consciousness he had never been a 
believer in it By this term (glacio-aqueous) he meant 
to say that the phenomena of drift were the result of joint action of ice 
and water, without saying which of these agents had exerted the 
greatest influence. But whether that glacio-aqueous action had been 
the result of the enormous accumulation of glaciers, according to 
Agassiz, or from floating icebergs according to Lyell 
and Murchison, or of the upheaval of the Arctic ocean whereby its 
aqueo-glacial contents were precipitated southward according to De la 
Beche. he had not then made up his mind nor has he yet made it up." 
Professor Hitchcock's attempt to find some compromise 
between the glacial and iceberg theories of the drift was a 
failure. He came very near to being a glacialist. If he had 
followed his own perception of the trtith he would have been 
the leader in a great forward movement in geological science, 
which, by his defection at the critical moment, was suppressed 
for twenty years. 
Discussion. — The printed accounts of the annual meetings 
of the Association of American Geologists and Naturalists 
give evidence of a lively interest in the subject of the drift, but 
there seems to have been no champion of the discredited gla- 
cial hypothesis; or if so he was not thought worthy of record. 
There was much difference of opinion as to the agencies of the 
drift but all were hostile to the new theory. The brothers 
Rogers, with Emmons, Jackson, Nicollet, Redfield, Cout- 
huoy and others, lost no opportunity of upholding some form 
of the diluvial hypothesis and for ten years no American geo- 
logist ventured openly to adopt and proclaim the theory of 
Agassiz. Doubtless there were various reasons for this un- 
receptive attitude, some of which we can discover. Lyell came 
to America in 1841, and in 1842 he attended the third meet- 
ing of the geologists, held at Boston, and brought the rein- 
forcement of his great reputation to those who favored the 
hypothesis of submergence and icebergs, of which he and 
Murchison were the great apostles. The supporters of this 
theory ]n-obably did not clearly understand the genesis of ice- 
bergs and did not realize that their hypothesis simply pushed 
the glacier area some distance northward. The scientific ob- 
