Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence

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quence and originality. To this may be partly due the fact that about this time he was strongly urged from various quarters to leave Neuchatel for some large

LA RIVE TO L

May 12

rs. I hope also that you will not forget what you have promised me for the "Bibliotheque Universelle." I am exceedingly anxious to ha

gular salary of three thousand francs, beside the student fees, which, in view of the character of your instruction, your reputation, and the novelty of your course, I place too low at a thousand francs; of this I am convinced. 2nd. The vacant professorship is one of geology and mineralogy, but should you wish it De la Planche will continue to teach the mineralogy, and you will replace it by paleontology, or any other subject which may suit you. . .Add to this resource that of a popular course for the world outside, ladies and others, which you might give in the winter, as at Neuchatel. The custom here is to pay fifty francs for the course of from twenty-five to thirty lectures. You will easily see that for such a course you would have at least as large an audience here as at Neuchatel. This is the more likely

hether what I propose suits you . . .Come! let yourself be persuaded. Sacrifice the capital to a provincial town. At Berlin, no doubt, you would be happy and honored; at Geneva, you would be the happiest, the most honored. Look at-, who shone as a star of the first magnitude at Geneva, and who is but a star of second or third rank in Paris. This, to be sure, would not be your case; nevertheless, I am satisfied that at Geneva, where you would be a second de Saussure, your position would be still more brilliant. I know that these motives of scientific self-love have little weight with you; nevertheless, wishing to omit nothing, I give them for what they are worth. But my hope

m to return to the canton where he had passed his earlier years. But he had cast in his lot with the Neuchatelois and was proof against all arguments. He remained faithful to the post he had chosen until he left it, temporarily as he then believed, to

fever while still a comparatively young man. The pretty parsonage, to which they were so much attached, passed int

cheme of establishing a lithographic press, to be in a great degree at his charge, was certainly an imprudent one for a poor man; but Agassiz hoped not only to facilitate his own publications by this means, but also to raise the standard of execution in works of a purely scientific character. Supported partly by his own exertions, partly by the ge

g under his daily supervision. The execution of these plates, under M. Nicolet's care, was admirable for the period. Professor Arnold Guyot, in his memoir of Agassiz, says of the plates for the "Fresh-Water Fishes": "We wonder at their beauty, and at their perfection o

ific labors. A year or two later M. Charles Vogt also united himself to the band of investigators and artists who had clustered about Agassiz as their central force. M.

lf that the inner moulding of the shell would give at least the form of its old inhabitant. For the practical work he engaged an admirable moulder, M. Stahl, who continued to be one of his staff at the lithographic establishment until he became permanently employed at the Jardin des Plantes. With his help and that of M. Henri Ladame, professor of physics and chemistry at Neuchatel, who prepared the delicate metal alloys in w

ccount of his undertakings at this time, and of the dif

Z TO SIR PHI

, August

, which I have founded solely in the interest of science and at the risk of my peace and my health. If I give you all these details, it is simply to explain my silence, which was caused not by pure negligence, but by the demands of an undertaking in the success of which my very existence is involved. . .This week I shall forward to the Secretary of the British Association for the Advancement of Science all that I have been able to do thus far, being unable to bring it myself, as I had hoped. You would oblige me greatly if you would give a look at these different works, which may, I hope, have various claims on your interest. First, there is the tenth number of the "Fossil Fishes," though the whole supply of publisher's copies will only be sent a few weeks later. Then there are the seven first plates of my sea-urchins, engraved with much care and with many details. A third series of pl

terests of science constituted a sufficient title to such a distinction, I should be the less surprised at the announcement contained in your last letter. The action of the Royal Society, so flatterin

; but I must work incessantly; that is my lot, and the happiness I find

nt Blanc. In both he was accompanied by his scientific collaborator, M. Desor, whose intrepidity and ardor hardly fell short of his own; by Mr. Dinkel as artist, and by one or two students and friends. These excursions were a kind of prelude to his more prolonged sojourns on the Alps, and to the series of observations carried on by him and his companions, which attracted so much attention in later years. But though Agassiz carried with him, on these first explorations, only the simplest means of invest

ks, often lying far above and beyond the present limits of the glaciers; the old moraines, long deserted by the ice, but defining its ancient fr

list of European reputation. In connection with this journey occurs the first attempt at an English letter found among Agassiz's papers. It is addressed to Buckland, and contains this passage: "Since I saw the glaciers I am quite of a snowy humor, and will have the whole surface of the earth covered with ice, and the whole prior creation dead by cold. In fact, I am quite satisfied that ice must be taken [included] in every complete explanation of the last changes which occurred at the surface of Europe." Considered in connection with their subsequent work together in the ancient ice-beds and moraines of England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales, it is curious to find Buckland answeri

fter Agassiz had been for some years established there. From that time forward there was hardly any break in their intercourse; they came to America at about the same time, and finally settled as professors, the one at Harvard College, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and the other at the College of New Jersey, in Princeton. They shar

cture of the ice, the so-called blue bands, deep down in the mass of the glacier.* (* See "Memoir of Louis Agassiz" by Arnold Guyot, written for the United States National Academy of Sciences, page 38.) In the succeeding years of their glacial researches together, Guyot took for his share the more special geological problems, the distribution of erratic boulders and of the glacial drift, as connected with the ancient extension of the glaciers. This led him away from the central station of observation to remoter valleys on the northern and southern slopes of the Alps, where he followed the descent of the glacial phenomena to the plains of central Europe on the one side and to those of northern Italy on the other. We therefore seldom hear of him with the band of workers who finally settled on the glacier of the Aar, because his share of the undertaking bec

z, Desor, M. Bettanier, an artist, and two or three other friends, was joined by the geologist Studer. Up to this time he had been a powerful opponent of Agassiz's views, and his conversion to the

Z TO SIR PHI

September

, the Monch, and the Eiger toward Brieg; thence I went to the glacier of the Rhone, and from there, establishing my headquarters at the Hospice of the Grimsel, I followed the glacier of the Aar to the foot of the Finsteraarhorn. There I ascertained the most important fact that I now know concerning the advance of glaciers, namely, that the cabin constructed by Hugi in 1827, at the foot of the Abschwung, is now four thousand feet lower down. Slight as is the inclination of the glacier, this cabin has been carried on by the ice with astonishing rapidity, and still more important is it that this rap

hich were most novel for his readers, were the concluding ones upon the ancient extension of the Swiss glaciers, and upon the former existence of an immense, unbroken sheet of ice, which had once covered the whole northern hemisphere. No one before had drawn such vast conclusions from the local phenomena of the Alpine valleys. "The surface of Europe," says Agassiz, "adorned before by a tropical vegetation and inhabited by troops of large elephants, enormous hippopotami, and gigantic carnivora, was suddenly buried under a vast mantle of ice, covering alike plains, lakes, seas and plateaus. Upon the life and movement of a powerful creation fell the silence of death. Springs paused, rivers ceased to flow, the rays of the sun, rising