Part 14 (1/2)

Lyell has adopted your theory in toto!!! Onhim a beautiful cluster of moraines, within two miles of his father's house, he instantly accepted it, as solving a host of difficulties that have all his life embarrassed him And not these only, but similar moraines and detritus ofcounties are explicable on your theory, and he has consented to my proposal that he should immediately lay them all down on a map of the county and describe theical Society I propose to give in , the same day with yours, as a sequel to your paper, a list of localities where I have observed silacial detritus in Scotland, since I left you, and in various parts of England

There are great reefs of gravel in the li district of Ireland They have a distinct naet No doubt they are et this, seen one of the at Florence Court, the seat of the Earl of Enniskillen, in County Fer lacial phenoo out of your way to see more than one; all the rest must follow as a corollary I trust you will not fail to be at Edinboro'

on the 20th, and at Sir W Trevelyan's on the 24th

A letter of later date in the saaining ground alish friends

LOUIS AGassIZ TO SIR PHILIP EGERTON

LONDON, Nove on Wednesday passed off very well; none of h Whewell and Murchison attempted an opposition; but as their objections were far-fetched, they did not produce hted to have soave me a chance to insist upon the exactness of my observations, and upon the want of solidity in the objections brought against them Dr Buckland was truly eloquent He has now full possession of this subject; is, indeed, completelyis definitely arranged with Lord Francis, ( Apropos of the sale of his original drawings of fossil fishes to Lord Francis Egerton) and that I now feel within th I have just written to thank him To-morrow I shall devote to the fossils sent me by Lord Enniskillen, a list of which I will forward to you

We append here, a little out of the regular course, a letter fro to look lacial conclusions

HUMBOLDT TO LOUIS AGassIZ

BERLIN, August 15, 1840

I auilty of mortals, my dear friend There are not three persons in the world whose remembrance and affection I value more than yours, or for whom I have a warmer love and adiving you a sign of life, without any expression of ifts I owe to you ( Probably the plates of the ”Fresh-Water Fishes” and other illustrated publications)

I aer answers any letters because he does not knohere to begin I receive on an average fifteen hundred letters a year I never dictate I hold that resort in horror How dictate a letter to a scholar for whoard? I allowthe persons I know least, whose wrath is theMy nearer friends (and none are more dear to me than yourself) suffer froence The tone of your excellent letters shows that I aht You spoil me

Your letters continue to be alarm and affectionate I receive few like them Since two thirds of the letters addressed toor thea parvenu courtier, an apostate from science This bitterness of individual claims does not diminish my ardent desire to be useful I act oftener than I answer I know that I like to do good, and this consciousness gives me tranquillity in spite of assiz, in the more simple and yet truly proud position which you have created for yourself You ought to take satisfaction in it as the father of a fainator and source of so reat and noble conceptions

Your admirable work on the fossil fishes draws to a close The last nu the true state of this vast publication, have soothed all irritation regarding it It is because I am so attached to you that I rejoice in the calmer at completion of the fossil fishes delivers ht cause you irreparable losses

You have shown not only what a talent like yours can accoe can triuly insurmountable obstacles

In ords shall I tell you how greatly our admiration is increased by this neork of yours on the Fresh-Water Fishes?

Nothing has appearedand color This chro we have had thus far What taste has directed the publication! Then the short descriptions accoularly to the charm and the enjoyment of this kind of study Accept my warm thanks, my dear friend I not only delivered your letter and the copy with it to the king, but I added a short note on theThe counselor of the Royal Cabinet writeshas ordered the same number of copies of the Fresh-Water Fishes as of the Fossil Fishes; that is to say, ten copies M de Werther has already received the order This is, to be sure, but a slight help; still, it is all that I have been able to obtain, and these few copies, with the king's name as subscriber, will always be useful to you

I cannot close this letter without asking your pardon for some expressions, too sharp, perhaps, in ical conceptions The very exaggeration of ht I attached to my objectionsMy desire is always to listen and to learn Taught froanization of past times was somewhat tropical in character, and startled therefore at these glacial interruptions, I cried ”Heresy!” at first But should we not always listen to a friendly voice like yours? I am interested in whatever is printed on these topics; so, if you have published anything at all coical ideas, have the great kindness to send it toof my own poor and superannuated works?

The sixth voluraphy of the Fifteenth Century” (Exa the second volume of a neork to be entitled ”Central Asia” It is not a second edition of ”Asiatic Fragments,” but a new and wholly different work The thirty-five sheets of the last voluether You can judge of the difficulty of printing at Paris and correcting proofs here,--at Poretz or at Toplitz I a to print the first number of my physics of the world, under the title of ”Cos” It is in no sense a reproduction of the lectures I gave here The subject is the same, but the presentation does not at all recall the forraver and more elevated style A ”spoken book” is always a poor book, just as lectures read are poor however well prepared

Published courses of lectures area voluen” Many unpublished things concerning the volcanoes of the Andes, about currents, etc And all this at the age when one begins to petrify! It is very rash!+ May this letter prove to you and to Mada only at the extremities, --the heart is still warm Retain for me the affection which I hold so dear

A DE HUMBOLDT

In the follointer, or, rather, in the early days of March, 1841, Agassiz visited, in colacier of the Aar and that of Rosenlaui He wished to exalacier of the Aar, and to compare the winter and summer temperature within as well as without the mass of ice But his chief object was to ascertain whether water still flowed fro the frosts of winter This fact would have a direct bearing upon the theory which referred the laciers chiefly to their lower surface, explaining them by the central heat of the earth as their main cause Satisfied as he was of the fallacy of this notion, Agassiz still wished to have the evidence of the glacier itself

The journey was, of course, a difficult one at such a season, but the weather was beautiful, and they acco They found no water except the pure and lilacier lay dead in the grasp of winter The results of this journey, tables of temperature, etc, are recorded in the ”Systeme Glaciaire”

In E Desor's ”Sejours dans les Glaciers” is found an interesting description of the incidents of this excursion and the appearance of the glaciers in winter In ascending the course of the Aar they frequently crossed the shrunken river on natural snow bridges, and approaching the Handeck over fearfully steep slopes of snow they had so the thread of water which was all that relacier of the Aar they found the Hotel des Neuchatelois buried in snohile the whole surface of the glacier as well as the surrounding peaks, from base to summit, wore the same spotless mantle The Finsteraarhorn alone stood out in bold relief, black against a white world, its abrupt slopes affording no foothold for the snow

The scene was far more monotonous than in summer Crevasses, with their blue depths of ice, were closed; the many-voiced streams were still; the h the universal shroud The sky ithout a cloud, the air transparent, but the glitter of the uniform white surface was exquisitely painful to the eyes and skin, and the travelers were obliged to wrap their heads in double veils They found the glacier of Rosenlaui less enveloped in snow than that of the Aar; and though the nificent ice-cave, so well known to travelers for its azure tints, was inaccessible, they could look into the vault and see that the habitual bed of the torrent was dry The journey was accomplished in a ithout any untoward accident

In the suer Alpine sojourn than ever before The special objects of the season's ere the internal structure of these vast in and continued existence, the action of water within theency in direct contact with the beds and walls of the valleys they occupied The fact of their forht be considered as established It remained to explain these facts with reference to the conditions prevailing within thefroassiz, as as he often said of himself no physicist, was the more anxious to have the cooperation of the ablest men in that department, and to share with them such facilities for observation and such results as he had thus far accumulated In addition to his usual collaborators, M Desor and M Vogt, he had, therefore, invited as his guest, during part of the season, the distinguished physicist, Professor Jaht with hie ( As the impressions of Mr

Forbes were only made known in connection with his own later and independent researches it is unnecessary to refer to them here) M

Escher de la Linth took also an active part in the work of the later suassiz had added the foreineer at Bienne, to whom he had confided his plans for the summer, and who furnished hi operations, assist in measurements, etc The artist of this year was M Jacques Burkhardt, a personal friend of Agassiz, and his fellow-student at Munich, where he had spent sohtsassiz in his work at various times, and when they both settled in Aassiz's household, accompanied him on his journeys, and remained with hiard till his own death in 1867 He was a loyal friend and a warh his dry good sense, whichand attractive companion

As it was necessary, in view of his special progralacier, and reach, if possible, its point of contact with the valley botto apparatus than had been used before, to be transported to the old site on the Aar glacier The results of these experiments are incorporated in the ”Systeme Glaciaire,”

published in 1846, with twenty-four folio plates and two hest interest with reference to the internal structure and temperature of the ice and the penetrability of its hout, as it proved, to air and water On one occasion the boring-rod, having been driven to a depth of one hundred and ten feet, dropped suddenly two feet lower, showing that it had passed through an open space hidden in the depth of the ice