2i6 The American Geologist. October, 1902. 
fully completed and published, and it is in the second part 
that he refers to the transport of erratics by ice*. The 
manuscript of a portion of the third part, for over forty years 
in the possession of the Geological Society of London, has re- 
cently been published (1899) by the council of the society, 
with Sir Archibald Geikie as editor. 
Geologists of the present day, however, learn also of Hut- 
ton's views through his friend and biographer, John Play- 
fair, in the "Illustrations of the Huttonian Theory of the 
Earth." published in 1802. Playfair therein voices the opin- 
ion of Hutton concerning glaciers when he says that "for 
the removing of large masses of rock, the most powerful en- 
gines without doubt which nature employs are the glaciers, 
those lakes' or rivers of ice which are formed in the highest 
vallevs of the Alps, and other mountains of the first order. 
Before the vallevs were cut out in the form they now are, and 
when the mountains w^ere still more elevated, huge fragments 
of rock may have been carried to great distances ; and it is not 
W'Onderful if these same masses, greatly diminished in size, 
and reduced to gravel or sand, have reached the shores or eve:, 
the bottom of the ocean." 
This original suggestion concerning the transportation of 
the erratic blocks of Switzerland by glaciers, at a time of 
great extension of ice in the Alps, apparently passed out of 
mind, however, till some thirty years later. X-'enetz and 
Charpentier were first to resume this study of glacial work in 
tracing the dispersal of crystalline rocks of the central Alps, 
over the great Swiss plain to the Jura mountains ; t but it 
remained for another to comprehend the full significance of 
the conditions observed, and to evolve investigations which 
led to the recognition of the Ice age, with its supremely im- 
portant bearing upon geology, and the antiquity of man. 
Jean Louis Rudolph Agassiz is the man who is universally 
recognized as the founder of glaciology. Agassiz was born 
in Switzerland in 1807, rose to distinction by his scientific 
work in Europe previous to 1846, when he came to the 
United States. Two years later he was elected professor 
of zoology and geology at Harvard L^niversity, and made 
*Theorv of tho Earth. Part 2, pp. 174. 21S. 
tSchweizer Gesell. Verhandl, 1834, p. 23. 
Ann. des Mines Vlll. 1835, p. 219. 
Leonhard and Bronn, Neues Jahrb, 1S37, p. 472. 
