The technicalities of this work, at once so comprehensive in its combinations and so minute in its details, could interest only the professional reader, but its generalizations may well have a certain attraction for every thoughtful mind. It treats of the relations, anatomical, zoological, and geological, between the whole class of fishes, fossil and living, illustrated by numerous plates, while additional light is thrown on the whole by the revelations of embryology.
"Notwithstanding these striking differences," says the author in the opening of the fifth chapter on the relations of fishes in general, "it is none the less evident to the attentive observer that one single idea has presided over the development of the whole class, and that all the deviations lead back to a primary plan, so that even if the thread seem broken in the present creation, one can reunite it on reaching the domain of fossil ichthyology."* (* Volume 1 chapter 5 pages 92, 93.)
Having shown how the present creation has given him the key to past creations, how the complete skeleton of the living fishes has explained the scattered fragments of the ancient ones, especially those of which the soft cartilaginous structure was liable to decay, he presents two modes of studying the type as a whole; either in its comparative anatomy, including in the comparison the whole history of the type, fossil and living, or in its comparative embryology. "The results," he adds, "of these two methods of study complete and control each other." In all his subsequent researches indeed, the history of the individual in its successive phases went hand in hand with the history of the type. He constantly tested his zoological results by his embryological investigations.
After a careful description of the dorsal chord in its embryological development, he shows that a certain parallelism exists between the comparative degrees of development of the vertebral column in the different groups of fishes, and the phases of its embryonic development in the higher fishes. Farther on he shows a like coincidence between the development of the system of fins in the different groups of fishes, and the gradual growth and differentiation of the fins in the embryo of the higher living fishes.* (* "Recherches sur les Poissons Fossiles", volume 1 chapter 5 page 102.) "There is, then," he concludes, "as we have said above, a certain analogy, or rather a certain parallelism, to be established between the embryological development of the Cycloids and Ctenoids, and the genetic or paleontological development of the whole class. Considered from this point of view, no one will dispute that the form of the caudal fin is of high importance for zoological and paleontological considerations, since it shows that the same thought, the same plan, which presides to-day over the formation of the embryo, is also manifested in the successive development of the numerous creation which have formerly peopled the earth." Agassiz says himself in his Preface: "I have succeeded in expressing the laws of succession and of the organic development of fishes during all geological epochs; and science may henceforth, in seeing the changes of this class from formation to formation, follow the progress of organization in one great division of the animal kingdom, through a complete series of the ages of the earth." This is not inconsistent with his position as the leading opponent of the development or Darwinian theories. To him, development meant development of plan as expressed in structure, not the change of one structure into another. To his apprehension the change was based upon intellectual, not upon material causes. He sums up his own conviction with reference to this question as follows:* (* "Recherches sur les Poissons Fossiles" volume 1 chapter 6 pages 171, 172. "Essay on the Classification of Fishes.") "Such facts proclaim aloud principles not yet discussed in science, but which paleontological researches place before the eyes of the observer with an ever-increasing persistency. I speak of the relations of the creation with the creator. Phenomena closely allied in the order of their succession, and yet without sufficient cause in themselves for their appearance; an infinite diversity of species without any common material bond, so grouping themselves as to present the most admirable progressive development to which our own species is linked,—are these not incontestable proofs of the existence of a superior intelligence whose power alone could have established such an order of things?. . ."
"More than fifteen hundred species of fossil fishes, which I have learned to know, tell me that species do not pass insensibly one into another, but that they appear and disappear unexpectedly, without direct relations with their precursors; for I think no one will seriously pretend that the numerous types of Cycloids and Ctenoids, almost all of which are contemporaneous with one an other, have descended from the Placoids and Ganoids. As well might one affirm that the Mammalia, and man with them, have descended directly from fishes. All these species have a fixed epoch of appearance and disappearance; their existence is even limited to an appointed time. And yet they present, as a whole, numerous affinities more or less close, a definite coordination in a given system of organization which has intimate relations with the mode of existence of each type, and even of each species. An invisible thread unwinds itself throughout all time, across this immense diversity, and presents to us as a definite result, a continual progress in the development of which man is the term, of which the four classes of vertebrates are intermediate forms, and the totality of invertebrate animals the constant accessory accompaniment."
The difficulty of carrying out comparisons so rigorous and extensive as were needed in order to reconstruct the organic relations between the fossil fishes of all geological formations and those of the present world, is best told by the author.* (* "Recherches sur les Poissons Fossiles" volume 1. Addition a la Preface.) "Possessing no fossil fishes myself, and renouncing forever the acquisition of collections so precious, I have been forced to seek the materials for my work in all the collections of Europe containing such remains; I have, therefore, made frequent journeys in Germany, in France, and in England, in order to examine, describe, and illustrate the objects of my researches. But notwithstanding the cordiality with which even the most precious specimens have been placed at my disposition, a serious inconvenience has resulted from this mode of working, namely, that I have rarely been able to compare directly the various specimens of the same species from different collections, and that I have often been obliged to make my identification from memory, or from simple notes, or, in the more fortunate cases, from my drawings only. It is impossible to imagine the fatigue, the exhaustion of all the faculties, involved in such a method. The hurry of traveling, joined to the lack of the most ordinary facilities for observation, has not rendered my task more easy. I therefore claim indulgence for such of my identifications as a later examination, made at leisure, may modify, and for descriptions which sometimes bear the stamp of the precipitation with which they have been prepared."
It was, perhaps, this experience of Agassiz's earlier life which made him so anxious to establish a museum of comparative zoology in this country,—a museum so abundant and comprehensive in material, that the student should not only find all classes of the animal kingdom represented within its walls, but preserved also in such numbers as to allow the sacrifice of many specimens for purposes of comparison and study. He was resolved that no student should stand there baffled at the door of knowledge, as he had often done himself, when shown the one precious specimen, which could not be removed, or even examined on the spot, because unique.
First Visit to England.Reception by Scientific Men.Work on Fossil Fishes there.Liberality of English Naturalists.First Relations with American Science.Farther Correspondence with Humboldt.Second Visit to England.Continuation of "Fossil Fishes."Other Scientific Publications.Attention drawn to Glacial Phenomena.Summer at Bex with Charpentier.Sale of Original Drawings for "Fossil Fishes."Meeting of Helvetic Society.Address on Ice-Period.Letters from Humboldt and Von Buch.
In August, 1834, according to his cherished hope, Agassiz went to England, and was received by the scientific men with a cordial sympathy which left not a day or an hour of his short sojourn there unoccupied. The following letter from Buckland is one of many proffering hospitality and friendly advice on his arrival.
OXFORD, August 26, 1834.
. . .I am rejoiced to hear of your safe arrival in London, and write to say that I am in Oxford, and that I shall be most happy to receive you and give you a bed in my house if you can come here immediately. I expect M. Arago and Mr. Pentland from Paris tomorrow (Wednesday) afternoon. I shall be most happy to show you our Oxford Museum on Thursday or Friday, and to proceed with you toward Edinburgh. Sir Philip Egerton has a fine collection of fossil fishes near Chester, which you should visit on your road. I have partly engaged myself to be with him on Monday, September 1st, but I think it would be desirable for you to go to him Saturday, that you may have time to take drawings of his fossil fishes.
I cannot tell certainly what day I shall leave Oxford until I see M. Arago, whom I hope you will meet at my house, on your arrival in Oxford. I shall hope to see you Wednesday evening or Thursday morning. Pray come to my house in Christ Church, with your baggage, the moment you reach Oxford. . .
Agassiz always looked back with delight on this first visit to Great Britain. It was the beginning of his life-long friendship with Buckland, Sedgwick, Murchison, Lyell, and others of like pursuits and interests. Made welcome in many homes, he could scarcely respond to all the numerous invitations, social and scientific, which followed the Edinburgh meeting.
Guided by Dr. Buckland, to whom not only every public and private collection, but every rare specimen in the United Kingdom, seems to have been known, he wandered from treasure to treasure. Every day brought its revelation, until, under the accumulation of new facts, he almost felt himself forced to begin afresh the work he had believed well advanced. He might have been discouraged by a wealth of resources which seemed to open countless paths, leading he knew not whither, but for the generosity of the English naturalists who allowed him to cull, out of sixty or more collections, two thousand specimens of fossil fishes, and to send them to London, where, by the kindness of the Geological Society, he was permitted to deposit them in a room in Somerset House. The mass of materials once sifted and arranged, the work of comparison and identification became comparatively easy. He sent at once for his faithful artist, Mr. Dinkel, who began, without delay, to copy all such specimens as threw new light on the history of fossil fishes, a work which detained him in England for several years.
Agassiz made at this time two friends, whose sympathy and cooperation in his scientific work were invaluable to him for the rest of his life. Sir Philip Egerton and Lord Cole (Earl of Enniskillen) owned two of the most valuable collections of fossil fishes in Great Britain.* (* Now the property of the British Museum.) To aid him in his researches, their most precious specimens were placed at Agassiz's disposition; his artist was allowed to work for months on their collections, and even after Agassiz came to America, they never failed to share with him, as far as possible, the advantages arising from the increase of their museums. From this time his correspondence with them, and especially with Sir Philip Egerton, is closely connected with the ever-growing interest as well as with the difficulties of his scientific career. Reluctantly, and with many a backward look, he left England in October, and returned to his lectures in Neuchatel, taking with him such specimens as were indispensable to the progress of his work. Every hour of the following winter which could be spared from his lectures was devoted to his fossil fishes.
A letter of this date from Professor Silliman, of New Haven,Connecticut, marks the beginning of his relations with his futureNew England home, and announces his first New England subscribers.
YALE COLLEGE NEW HAVEN, UNITED STATES OF NORTH AMERICA, April 22, 1835.
. . .From Boston, March 6th, I had the honor to thank you for your letter of January 5th, and for your splendid present of your great work on fossil fishes—livraison 1-22—received, with the plates. I also gave a notice of the work in the April number of the Journal* (* "The American Journal of Science and Arts".) (this present month), and republished Mr. Bakewell's account of your visit to Mr. Mantell's museum.
In Boston I made some little efforts in behalf of your work, and have the pleasure of naming as follows:—
Harvard University, Cambridge (Cambridge is only four miles fromBoston), by Hon. Josiah Quincy, President.
Boston Athenaeum, by its Librarian.
Benjamin Green, Esquire, President of the Boston Natural HistorySociety.
I shall make application to some other institutions or individuals, but do not venture to promise anything more than my best exertions . . .
Agassiz little dreamed, as he read this letter, how familiar these far-off localities would become to him, or how often, in after years, he would traverse by day and by night the four miles which lay between Boston and his home in Cambridge.
Agassiz still sought and received, as we see by the following letter, Humboldt's sympathy in every step of his work.
BERLIN, May, 1835.
I am to blame for my neglect of you, my dear friend, but when you consider the grief which depresses me,* (* Owing to the death of his brother, William von Humboldt.) and renders me unfit to keep up my scientific connections, you will not be so unkind as to bear me any ill-will for my long silence. You are too well aware of my high esteem for your talents and your character—you know too well the affectionate friendship I bear you—to fear for a moment that you could be forgotten.
I have seen the being I loved most, and who alone gave me some interest in this arid land, slowly decline. For four long years my brother had suffered from a weakness of all the muscles, which made me always fear that the seat of the trouble was the medulla oblongata. Yet his step was firm; his head was entirely clear. The higher intellectual faculties retained all their energy. He was engaged from twelve to thirteen hours a day on his works, reading or rather dictating, for a nervous trembling of the hand prevented him from using a pen. Surrounded by a numerous family; living on a spot created, so to speak, by himself, and in a house which he had adorned with antique statues; withdrawn also from affairs, he was still attached to life. The illness which carried him off in ten days—an inflammation of the chest—was but a secondary symptom of his disease. He died without pain, with a strength of character and a serenity of mind worthy of the greatest admiration. It is cruel to see so noble an intelligence struggle during ten long days against physical destruction. We are told that in great grief we should turn with redoubled energy to the study of nature. The advice is easy to give; but for a long time even the wish for distraction is wanting.
My brother leaves two works which we intend to publish: one upon the languages and ancient Indian civilization of the Asiatic archipelago, and the other upon the structure of languages in general, and the influence of that structure upon the intellectual development of nations. This last work has great beauty of style. We shall soon begin the publication of it. My brother's extensive correspondence with all those countries over which his philological studies extended brings upon me just at present, such a multiplicity of occupations and duties that I can only write you these few lines, my dear friend, as a pledge of my constant affection, and, I may also add, my admiration of your eminent works. It is a pleasure to watch the growing renown of those who are dear to us; and who should merit success more than you, whose elevation of character is proof against the temptations of literary self-love? I thank you for the little you have told me of your home life. It is not enough to be praised and recognized as a great and profound naturalist; to this one must add domestic happiness as well. . .
I am about finishing my long and wearisome work of (illegible); a critical examinationinto the geography of the Middle Ages, of which fifty sheets are already printed. I will send you the volumes as soon as they appear, in octavo. I devoured your fourth number; the plates are almost finer than the previous ones; and the text, though I have only looked it through hastily, interested me deeply, especially the analytical catalogue of Bolca, and the more general and very philosophical views of fishes in general, pages 57-64. The latter is also remarkable in point of style. . .
M. von Buch, who has just left me, sends you a warm greeting. None the less does he consider the method of issuing your text in fragments from different volumes, altogether diabolical. I also complain a little, though in all humility; but I suppose it to be connected with the difficulty of concluding any one family, when new materials are daily accumulating on your hands. Continue then as before. In my judgment, M. Agassiz never does wrong. . .
The above letter, though written in May, did not reach Agassiz until the end of July, when he was again on his way to England, where his answer is dated.
(LONDON), October—, 1835.
. . .I cannot express to you my pleasure in reading your letter of May 10th (which was, unhappily, only delivered to me on my passage through Carlsruhe, at the end of July). . .To know that I have occupied your thoughts a moment, especially in days of trial and sorrow such as you have had to bear, raises me in my own eyes, and redoubles my hope for the future. And just now such encouragement is particularly cheering under the difficulties which I meet in completing my task in England. I have now been here nearly two months, and I hope before leaving to finish the description of all that I brought together at the Geological Society last year. Knowing that you are in Paris, however, I cannot resist the temptation of going to see you; indeed, should your stay be prolonged for some weeks, it would be my most direct path for home. I should like to tell you a little of what I have done, and how the world has gone with me since we last met. . .I have certainly committed an imprudence in throwing myself into an enterprise so vast in proportion to my means as my "Fossil Fishes." But, having begun it, I have no alternative; my only safety is in success. I have a firm conviction that I shall bring my work to a happy issue, though often in the evening I hardly know how the mill is to be turned to-morrow. . .
By a great good fortune for me, the British Association, at the suggestion of Buckland, Sedgwick, and Murchison, has renewed, for the present year, its vote of one hundred guineas toward the facilitating of researches upon the fossil fishes of England, and I hope that a considerable part of this sum may be awarded to me, in which case I may be able to complete the greater number of the drawings I need. If I had obtained in France only half the subscriptions I have had in England, I should be afloat; but thus far M. Bailliere has only disposed of some fifteen copies. . .My work advances fairly; I shall soon have described all the species I know, numbering now about nine hundred. I need some weeks in Paris for the comparison of several tertiary species with living ones in order to satisfy myself of their specific identity, and then my task will be accomplished. Next comes the putting in order of all my notes. My long vacations will give me time to do this with the greatest care. . .
His second visit to England, during which the above letter was written, was chiefly spent in reviewing the work of his artist, whom he now reinforced with a second draughtsman, M. Weber, the same who had formerly worked with him in Munich. He also attended the meeting of the British Association in Dublin, stayed a few days at Oulton Park for another look at the collections of Sir Philip Egerton, made a second grand tour among the other fossil fishes of England and Ireland, and returned to Neuchatel, leaving his two artists in London with their hands more than full.
While Agassiz thus pursued his work on fossil fishes with ardor and an almost perilous audacity, in view of his small means, he found also time for various other investigations. During the year 1836, though pushing forward constantly the publication of the "Poissons Fossiles," his "Prodromus of the Class of Echinodermata" appeared in the Memoirs of the Natural History Society of Neuchatel, as well as his paper on the fossil Echini belonging to the Neocomian group of the Neuchatel Jura, accompanied by figures. Not long after, he published in the Memoirs of the Helvetic Society his descriptions of fossil Echini peculiar to Switzerland, and issued also the first number of a more extensive work, "Monographie d'Echinodermes." During this year he received a new evidence of the sympathy of the English naturalists, in the Wollaston medal awarded to him by the London Geological Society.
The summer of 1836 was an eventful one for Agassiz,—the opening, indeed, of a new and brilliant chapter in his life. The attention of the ignorant and the learned had alike been called to the singular glacial phenomena of movement and transportation in the Alpine valleys. The peasant had told his strange story of boulders carried on the back of the ice, of the alternate retreat and advance of glaciers, now shrinking to narrower limits, now plunging forward into adjoining fields, by some unexplained power of expansion and contraction. Scientific men were awake to the interest of these facts, but had considered them only as local phenomena. Venetz and Charpentier were the first to detect their wider significance. The former traced the ancient limits of the Alpine glaciers as defined by the frame-work of debris or loose material they had left behind them; and Charpentier went farther, and affirmed that all the erratic boulders scattered over the plain of Switzerland and on the sides of the Jura had been thus distributed by ice and not by water, as had been supposed.
Agassiz was among those who received this hypothesis as improbable and untenable. Still, he was anxious to see the facts in place, and Charpentier was glad to be his guide. He therefore passed his vacation, during this summer of 1836, at the pretty town of Bex, in the valley of the Rhone. Here he spent a number of weeks in explorations, which served at the same time as a relaxation from his more sedentary work. He went expecting to confirm his own doubts, and to disabuse his friend Charpentier of his errors. But after visiting with him the glaciers of the Diablerets, those of the valley of Chamounix, and the moraines of the great valley of the Rhone and its principal lateral valleys, he came away satisfied that a too narrow interpretation of the phenomena was Charpentier's only mistake.
During this otherwise delightful summer, he was not without renewed anxiety lest he should be obliged to suspend the publication of the Fossil Fishes for want of means to carry it on. On this account he writes from Bex to Sir Philip Egerton in relation to the sale of his original drawings, the only property he possessed. "It is absolutely impossible," he says, "for me to issue even another number until this sale is effected. . .I shall consider myself more than repaid if I receive, in exchange for the whole collection of drawings, simply what I have expended upon them, provided I may keep those which have yet to be lithographed until that be done."
Sir Philip made every effort to effect a sale to the British Museum. He failed at the moment, but the collection was finally purchased and presented to the British Museum by a generous relative of his own, Lord Francis Egerton. In the mean time, Sir Philip and Lord Cole, in order to make it possible for Agassiz to retain the services of Mr. Dinkel, proposed to pay his expenses while he was drawing such specimens from their own collections as were needed for the work. These drawings were, of course, finally to remain their own property.
During his sojourn at Bex, Agassiz's intellect and imagination had been deeply stirred by the glacial phenomena. In the winter of 1837, on his return to Neuchatel, he investigated anew the slopes of the Jura, and found that the facts there told the same story. Although he resumed with unabated ardor his various works on fishes, radiates, and mollusks, a new chapter of nature was all the while unfolding itself in his fertile brain. When the Helvetic Association assembled at Neuchatel in the following summer, the young president, from whom the members had expected to hear new tidings of fossil fishes, startled them by the presentation of a glacial theory, in which the local erratic phenomena of the Swiss valleys assumed a cosmic significance. It is worthy of remark here that the first large outlines in which Agassiz, when a young man, planned his intellectual work gave the key-note to all that followed. As the generalizations on which all his future zoological researches were based, are sketched in the Preface to his "Poissons Fossiles," so his opening address to the Helvetic Society in 1837 unfolds the glacial period as a whole, much as he saw it at the close of his life, after he had studied the phenomena on three continents. In this address he announced his conviction that a great ice-period, due to a temporary oscillation of the temperature of the globe, had covered the surface of the earth with a sheet of ice, extending at least from the north pole to Central Europe and Asia. "Siberian winter," he says, "established itself for a time over a world previously covered with a rich vegetation and peopled with large mammalia, similar to those now inhabiting the warm regions of India and Africa. Death enveloped all nature in a shroud, and the cold, having reached its highest degree, gave to this mass of ice, at the maximum of tension, the greatest possible hardness." In this novel presentation the distribution of erratic boulders, instead of being classed among local phenomena, was considered "as one of the accidents accompanying the vast change occasioned by the fall of the temperature of our globe before the commencement of our epoch."
This was, indeed, throwing the gauntlet down to the old expounders of erratic phenomena upon the principle of floods, freshets, and floating ice. Many well-known geologists were present at the meeting, among them Leopold von Buch, who could hardly contain his indignation, mingled with contempt, for what seemed to him the view of a youthful and inexperienced observer. One would have liked to hear the discussion which followed, in special section, between Von Buch, Charpentier, and Agassiz. Elie de Beaumont, who should have made the fourth, did not arrive till later. Difference of opinion, however, never disturbed the cordial relation which existed between Von Buch and his young opponent. Indeed, Agassiz's reverence and admiration for Von Buch was then, and continued throughout his life, deep and loyal.
Not alone from the men who had made these subjects their special study, did Agassiz meet with discouragements. The letters of his beloved mentor, Humboldt, in 1837, show how much he regretted that any part of his young friend's energy should be diverted from zoology, to a field of investigation which he then believed to be one of theory rather than of precise demonstration. He was, perhaps, partly influenced by the fact that he saw through the prejudiced eyes of his friend Von Buch. "Over your and Charpentier's moraines," he says, in one of his letters, "Leopold von Buch rages, as you may already know, considering the subject, as he does, his exclusive property. But I too, though by no means so bitterly opposed to new views, and ready to believe that the boulders have not all been moved by the same means, am yet inclined to think the moraines due to more local causes."
The next letter shows that Humboldt was seriously anxious lest this new field of activity, with its fascinating speculations, should draw Agassiz away from his ichthyological researches.
BERLIN, December 2, 1837.
I have this moment received, my dear friend, by the hand of M. de Werther, the cabinet minister, your eighth and ninth numbers, with a fine pamphlet of text. I hasten to express my warm thanks, and I congratulate the public on your somewhat tardy resolution to give a larger proportion of text. One should flatter neither the king, nor the people, nor one's dearest friend. I maintain, therefore, that no one has told you forcibly enough how the very persons who justly admire your work, constantly complain of this fragmentary style of publication, which is the despair of those who have not the leisure to place your scattered sheets where they belong and disentangle the skein.* (* Owing to the irregularity with which he received and was forced to work up his material, Agassiz was often either in advance or in arrears with certain parts of his subject, so that his plates and his text did not keep pace with each other, thus causing his readers much annoyance.)
I think you would do well to publish for a while more text than plates. You could do this the better because your text is excellent, full of new and important ideas, expressed with admirable clearness. The charming letter (again without a date) which preceded your package impressed me painfully. I see you are ill again; you complain of congestion of the head and eyes. For mercy's sake take care of your health which is so dear to us. I am afraid you work too much, and (shall I say it frankly?) that you spread your intellect over too many subjects at once. I think that you should concentrate your moral and also your pecuniary strength upon this beautiful work on fossil fishes. In so doing you will render a greater service to positive geology, than by these general considerations (a little icy withal) on the revolutions of the primitive world; considerations which, as you well know, convince only those who give them birth. In accepting considerable sums from England, you have, so to speak, contracted obligations to be met only by completing a work which will be at once a monument to your own glory and a landmark in the history of science. Admirable and exact as your researches on other fossils are, your contemporaries claim from you the fishes above all. You will say that this is making you the slave of others; perfectly true, but such is the pleasing position of affairs here below. Have I not been driven for thirty-three years to busy myself with that tiresome America, and am I not, even yet, daily insulted because, after publishing thirty-two volumes of the great edition in folio and in quarto, and twelve hundred plates, one volume of the historical section is wanting? We men of letters are the servants of an arbitrary master, whom we have imprudently chosen, who flatters and pets us first, and then tyrannizes over us if we do not work to his liking. You see, my dear friend, I play the grumbling old man, and, at the risk of deeply displeasing you, place myself on the side of the despotic public. . .
With reference to the general or periodical lowering of the temperature of the globe, I have never thought it necessary, on account of the elephant of the Lena, to admit that sudden frost of which Cuvier used to speak. What I have seen in Siberia, and what has been observed in Captain Beechey's expedition on the northwest coast of America, simply proves that there exists a layer of frozen drift, in the fissures of which (even now) the muscular flesh of any animal which should accidentally fall into them would be preserved intact. It is a slight local phenomenon. To me, the ensemble of geological phenomena seems to prove, not the prevalence of this glacial surface on which you would carry along your boulders, but a very high temperature spreading almost to the poles, a temperature favorable to organizations resembling those now living in the tropics. Your ice frightens me, and gladly as I would welcome you here, my dear friend, I think, perhaps, for the sake of your health, and also that you may not see this country, always so hideous, under a sheet of snow and ice (in February), you would do better to come two months later, with the first verdure. This is suggested by a letter received yesterday by M. d'O—, which alarmed me a little, because the state of your eyes obliged you to write by another hand. Pray do not think of traveling before you are quite well. I close this letter, feeling sure that it does not contain a line which is not an expression of friendship and of the high esteem I bear you. The magnificence of your last numbers, eight and nine, cannot be told. How admirably executed are your Macropoma, the Ophiopris procerus, Mantell's great beast, the minute details of the Dercetis, Psammodus,. . .the skeletons. . . There is nothing like it in all that we possess upon vertebrates. I have also begun to study your text, so rich in well arranged facts; the monograph of the Lepidostei, the passage upon the bony rays, and, dear Agassiz, I could hardly believe my eyes, sixty-five continuous pages of the third volume, without interruption! You will spoil the public. But, my good friend, you have already information upon a thousand species; "claudite jam rivos!" You say your work can go on if you have two hundred subscribers; but if you continue to support two traveling draughtsmen, I predict, as a practical man, that it cannot go on. You cannot even publish what you have gathered in the last five years. Consider that in attempting to give a review of all the fossil fishes which now exist in collections, you pursue a phantom which ever flies before you. Such a work would not be finished in less than fifteen years, and besides, this NOW is an uncertain element. Cannot you conquer yourself so far as to finish what you have in your possession at present? Recall your artists. With the reputation you enjoy in Europe, whatever might essentially change your opinion on certain organisms would willingly be sent to you. If you continue to keep two ambassadors in foreign lands, the means you destine for the engraving and printing will soon be absorbed. You will struggle with domestic difficulties, and at sixty years of age (tremble at the sight of this number!) you will be as uncertain as you are to-day, whether you possess, even in your collection of drawings, all that is to be found among amateurs. How exhaust an ocean in which the species are indefinitely increasing? Finish, first, what you have this December, 1837, and then, if the subject does not weary you, publish the supplements in 1847. You must not forget that these supplements will be of two kinds: 1st. Ideas which modify some of your old views. 2nd. New species. Only the first kind of supplement would be really desirable. Furthermore, you must regain your intellectual independence and not let yourself be scolded any more by M. de Humboldt. Little will it avail you should I vanish from the scene of this world with your fourteenth number! When I am a fossil in my turn I shall still appear to you as a ghost, having under my arm the pages you have failed to interpolate and the volume of that eternal America which I owe to the public. I close with a touch of fun, in order that my letter may seem a little less like preaching. A thousand affectionate remembrances. No more ice, not much of echinoderms, plenty of fish, recall of ambassadors in partibus, and great severity toward the book-sellers, an infernal race, two or three of whom have been killed under me.
I sigh to think of the trouble my horrible writing will give you.
A letter of about the same date from Von Buch shows that, however he might storm at Agassiz's heterodox geology, he was in full sympathy with his work in general.
December 22, 1837.
. . .Pray reinstate me in the good graces of my unknown benefactor among you. By a great mistake the reports of the Society forwarded to me from Neuchatel have been sent back. As it is well known at the post-office that I do not keep the piles of educational journals sent to me from France, the postage on them being much too heavy for my means, they took it for granted that this journal, the charges on which amounted to several crowns, was of the number. I am very sorry. I do not even know the contents of the journal, but I suppose it contained papers of yours, full of genius and ardor. I like your way of looking at nature, and I think you render great service to science by your observations. A right spirit will readily lead you to see that this is the true road to glory, far preferable to the one which leads to vain analogies and speculations, the time for which is long past. I am grieved to hear that you are not well, and that your eyes refuse their service. M. de Humboldt tells me that you are seeking a better climate here, in the month of February. You may find it, perhaps, thanks to our stoves. But as we shall still have plenty of ice in the streets, your glacial opinions will not find a market at that season. I should like to present you with a memoir or monograph of mine, just published, on Spirifer and Orthis, but I will take good care to let no one pay postage on a work which, by its nature, can have but a very limited interest. . .I will await your arrival to give you these descriptions. I am expecting the numbers of your Fossil Fishes, which have not yet come. Humboldt often speaks of them to me. Ah! how much I prefer you in a field which is wholly your own than in one where you break in upon the measured and cautious tread, introduced by Saussure in geology. You, too, will reconsider all this, and will yet treat the views of Saussure and Escher with more respect. Everything here turns to infusoria. Ehrenberg has just discovered that an apparently sandy deposit, twenty feet in thickness, under the "Luneburgerheyde," is composed entirely of infusoria of a kind still living in the neighborhood of Berlin. This layer rests upon a brown deposit known to be ten feet in thickness. The latter consists, for one fifth of the depth, of pine pollen, which burns. The rest is of infusoria. Thus these animals, which the naked eye has not power to discern, have themselves the power to build up mountain chains. . .
Invitation to Professorships at Geneva and Lausanne.Death of his Father.Establishment of Lithographic Press at Neuchatel.Researches upon Structure of Mollusks.Internal Casts of Shells.Glacial Explorations.Views of Buckland.Relations with Arnold Guyot.Their Work together in the Alps.Letter to Sir Philip Egerton concerning Glacial Work.Summer of 1839.Publication of "Etudes sur les Glaciers."
Although Agassiz's daring treatment of the glacial phenomena had excited much opposition and angry comment, it had also made a powerful impression by its eloquence 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 larger field. One of the most seductive of these invitations, owing to the affectionate spirit in which it was offered, came through Monsieur de la Rive, in Geneva.
GENEVA, May 12, 1836.
. . .I have not yet received your address. I hope you will send it to me without delay, for I am anxious to bring it before our readers. I hope also that you will not forget what you have promised me for the "Bibliotheque Universelle." I am exceedingly anxious to have your cooperation; the more so that it will reinforce that of several distinguished savants whose assistance I have recently secured.
If I weary you with a second letter, however, it is not only to remind you of your promise about the "Bibliotheque Universelle," but for another object still more important and urgent. The matter stands thus. Our academic courses have just opened under favorable auspices. The number of students is much increased, and, especially, we have a good many from Germany and England. This circumstance makes us feel more strongly the importance of completing our organization, and of doing this wisely and quickly. I will not play the diplomat with you, but will frankly say, without circumlocution, that you seem to me the one essential, the one indispensable man. After having talked with some influential persons here, I feel sure that if you say to me, "I will come," I can obtain for you the following conditions: 1st. A regular 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 because there is a demand for these courses, Pictet being dead, and M. Rossi and M. de Castella having ceased to give them. No one has come forward as their heir, fine as the inheritance is; some are too busy, others have not the kind of talent needed, and none have attempted to replace these gentlemen in this especial line, one in which you excel, both by your gifts and your fortunate choice of a subject more in vogue just now than any other. Come then, to work in this rich vein before others present themselves for the same purpose. Finally, since I must make up your budget, the "Bibliotheque Universelle," which pays fifty francs a sheet, would be always open to you; there you could bring the fruits of your productive leisure. Certainly it would be easy for you to make in this way an additional thousand francs.
Here, then, is a statement, precise and full, of the condition of things, and of what you may hope to find here. The moment is propitious; there is a movement among us just now in favor of the sciences, and this winter the plan of a large building for our museum and library will be presented to our common council. The work should begin next summer; you well know how much we should value your ideas and your advice on this subject. There may also be question of a director for the museum, and of an apartment for him in the new edifice; you will not doubt to whom such a place would be offered. But let us not draw upon the future; let us limit ourselves to the present, and see whether 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 rests far more on the arguments I have first presented; they come from the heart, and with you the heart responds as readily as the genius. But enough! I will not fatigue you with farther considerations. I think I have given you all the points necessary for your decision. Be so kind as to let me know as soon as possible what you intend to do. Have the kindness also not to speak of the contents of this letter, and remember that it is not the Rector of the Academy of Geneva, but the Professor Auguste de la Rive, who writes in his own private person. Promptitude and silence, then, are the two recommendations which I make to you while we await the Yes we so greatly desire. . .
More tempting still must have been the official invitation received a few months later to a professorship at Lausanne, strengthened as it was by the affectionate entreaties of relations and friends, urging him for the sake of family ties and patriotism 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 come to America. The citizens of his adopted town expressed their appreciation of his loyalty to them in a warm letter of thanks, begging, at the same time, his acceptance of the sum of six thousand francs, payable by installments during three years.
The summer of 1837 was a sad one to Agassiz and to his whole family; his father died at Concise, carried off by a fever while still a comparatively young man. The pretty parsonage, to which they were so much attached, passed into other hands, and thenceforward the home of Madame Agassiz was with her children, among whom she divided her time.
In 1838 Agassiz founded a lithographic printing establishment in Neuchatel, which was carried on for many years under his direction. Thus far his plates had been lithographed in Munich. Their execution at such a distance involved constant annoyance, and sometimes great waste of time and money, in sending the proofs to and fro for correction. The scheme 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 generosity of others, the establishment was almost exclusively dependent upon him for its unceasing activity. He was fortunate in securing for its head M. Hercule Nicolet, a very able lithographic artist, who had had much experience in engraving objects of natural history, and was specially versed in the recently invented art of chromatic lithography.
Agassiz was now driving all his steeds abreast. Beside his duties as professor, he was printing at the same time his "Fossil Fishes," his "Fresh-Water Fishes," and his investigations on fossil Echinoderms and Mollusks,—the illustrations for all these various works being 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 of color and outline, when we remember that they were almost the first essays of the newly-invented art of lithochromy, produced at a time when France and Belgium were showering rewards on very inferior work of the kind, as the foremost specimens of progress in the art."
All this work could hardly be carried on single handed. In 1837 M. Edouard Desor joined Agassiz in Neuchatel, and became for many years his intimate associate in scientific 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. Ernest Favre says of this period of his life: "He displayed during these years an incredible energy, of which the history of science offers, perhaps, no other example."
Among his most important zoological researches at this time were those upon mollusks. His method of studying this class was too original and too characteristic to be passed by without notice. The science of conchology had heretofore been based almost wholly upon the study of the empty shells. To Agassiz this seemed superficial. Longing to know more of the relation between the animal and its outer covering, he bethought himself 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 which the first mould was taken, Agassiz obtained casts in which the form of the animals belonging to the shells was perfectly reproduced. This method has since passed into universal use. By its aid he obtained a new means of ascertaining the relations between fossil and living mollusks. It was of vast service to him in preparing his "Etudes critiques sur les Mollusques fossiles,"—a quarto volume with nearly one hundred plates.
The following letter to Sir Philip Egerton gives some account of his undertakings at this time, and of the difficulties entailed upon him by their number and variety.
NEUCHATEL, August 10, 1838.
. . .These last months have been a time of trial to me, and I have been forced to give up my correspondence completely in order to meet the ever-increasing demands of my work. You know how difficult it is to find a quiet moment and an easy mind for writing, when one is pursued by printing or lithographic proofs, and forced besides to prepare unceasing occupation for numerous employees. Add to this the close research required by the work of editing, and you surely will find an excuse for my delay. I think I have already written you that in order to have everything under my own eye, I had founded a lithographic establishment at Neuchatel in the hope of avoiding in future the procrastinations to which my proofs were liable when the work was done at Munich. . .I hope that my new publications will be sufficiently well received to justify me in supporting an establishment unique of its kind, 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 plates relates to critical studies on fossil mollusks, little or erroneously known, and on their internal casts. This is a quite novel side of the study of shells, and will throw light on the organization of animals known hitherto only by the shell. I have made a plaster collection of them for the Geological Society. They have been packed some time, but my late journey to Paris has prevented me from forwarding them till now. As soon as I have a moment, I shall make out the catalogue and send it on. When you go to London, do not fail to examine them; the result is curious enough. Finally, the plates for the first number of my "Fresh-Water Fishes" are in great part finished, and also included in my package for Newcastle. . .The plates are executed by a new process, and printed in various tints on different stones, resulting in a remarkable uniformity of coloring in all the impressions. . .
Such are the new credentials with which I present myself, as I bring my thanks for the honor paid to me by my nomination for the vacancy in the Royal Society of London. If unbounded devotion to the interests 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 flattering to the candidate of your choice, has satisfied a desire which I should hardly have dared to form for many a year,—that of becoming a member of a body so illustrious as the Royal Society of London. . .
Each time I write I wish I could close with the hope of seeing you soon; but I must work incessantly; that is my lot, and the happiness I find in it gives a charm to my occupations however numerous they may be. . .
While Agassiz's various zoological works were thus pressed with unceasing activity, the glaciers and their attendant phenomena, which had so captivated his imagination, were ever present to his thought. In August of the year 1838, a year after he had announced at the meeting of the Helvetic Society his comprehensive theory respecting the action of ice over the whole northern hemisphere, he made two important excursions in the Alps. The first was to the valley of Hassli, the second to the glaciers of Mont 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 investigation and experiment, they were no amateur excursions. On these first Alpine journeys he had in his mind the sketch he meant to fill out. The significance of the phenomena was already clear to him. What he sought was the connection. Following the same comparative method, he intended to track the footsteps of the ice as he had gathered and put together the fragments of his fossil fishes, till the scattered facts should fall into their natural order once more and tell their story from beginning to end.
In his explorations of 1838 he found everywhere the same phenomena; the grooved and polished and graven surfaces and the rounded and modeled rocks, often lying far above and beyond the present limits of the glaciers; the old moraines, long deserted by the ice, but defining its ancient frontiers; the erratic blocks, transported far from their place of origin and disposed in an order and position unexplained by the agency of water.
These excursions, though not without their dangers and fatigues, were full of charm for men who, however serious their aims, were still young enough to enter like boys into the spirit of adventure. Agassiz himself was but thirty-one; an ardent pedestrian, he delighted in feats of walking and climbing. His friend Dinkel relates that one day, while pausing at Grindelwald for refreshment, they met an elderly traveler who asked him, after listening awhile to their gay talk, in which appeals were constantly made to "Agassiz," if that was perhaps the son of the celebrated professor of Neuchatel. The answer amazed him; he could hardly believe that the young man before him was the naturalist 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 answering: "I am sorry that I cannot entirely adopt the new theory you advocate to explain transported blocks by moraines; for supposing it adequate to explain the phenomena of Switzerland, it would not apply to the granite blocks and transported gravel of England, which I can only explain by referring to currents of water." During the same summer Mrs. Buckland writes from Interlaken, in the course of a journey in Switzerland with her husband. . ."We have made a good tour of the Oberland and have seen glaciers, etc., but Dr. Buckland is as far as ever from agreeing with you." We shall see hereafter how completely he became a convert to Agassiz's glacial theory in its widest acceptation.
One friend, scarcely mentioned thus far in this biography, was yet, from the beginning, the close associate of Agassiz's glacier work. Arnold Guyot and he had been friends from boyhood. Their university life separated them for a time, Guyot being at Berlin while Agassiz was at Munich, and they became colleagues at Neuchatel only after 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 shared all their scientific interests; and when they were both old men, Guyot brought to Agassiz's final undertaking, the establishment of a summer school at Penikese, a cooperation as active and affectionate as that he had given in his youth to his friend's scheme for establishing a permanent scientific summer station in the high Alps.
In a short visit made by Agassiz to Paris in the spring of 1838 he unfolded his whole plan to Guyot, then residing there, and persuaded him to undertake a certain part of the investigation. During this very summer of 1838, therefore, while Agassiz was tracing the ancient limits of the ice in the Bernese Oberland and the Haut Valais, and later, in the valley of Chamounix, Guyot was studying the structure and movement of the ice during a six weeks' tour in the central Alps. At the conclusion of their respective journeys they met to compare notes, at the session of the Geological Society of France, at Porrentruy, where Agassiz made a report upon the general results of his summer's work; while Guyot read a paper, the contents of which have never been fully published, upon the movement of glaciers and upon their internal features, including the laminated structure 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 became a more isolated one. It was nevertheless an integral part of the original scheme, which was carried on connectedly to the end, the results of the work in the different departments being constantly reported and compared. So much was this the case, that the intention of Agassiz had been to embody the whole in a publication, the first part of which should contain the glacial system of Agassiz; the second the Alpine erratics, by Guyot; while the third and final portion, by E. Desor, should treat of the erratic phenomena outside of Switzerland. The first volume alone was completed. Unlooked for circumstances made the continuation of the work impossible, and the five thousand specimens of the erratic rocks of Switzerland collected by Professor Guyot, in preparation for his part of the publication, are now deposited in the College of New Jersey, at Princeton.
In the following summer of 1839 Agassiz took the chain of Monte Rosa and Matterhorn as the field of a larger and more systematic observation. On this occasion, the usual party consisting of Agassiz, 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 glacial theory during this excursion was looked upon by them all as a victory greater than any gained over the regions of ice and snow. Some account of this journey occurs in the following letter.
NEUCHATEL, September 10, 1839.
. . .Under these circumstances, I thought I could not do better than to pass some weeks in the solitude of the high Alps; I lived about a fortnight in the region of the glaciers, ascending some new field of ice every day, and trying to scale the sides of our highest peaks. I thus examined in succession all the glaciers descending from the majestic summits of Monte Rosa and the Matterhorn, whose numerous crests form a most gigantic amphitheatre, which lifts itself above the everlasting snow. Afterward I visited the sea of ice which, under the name of the glacier of Aletsch, flows from the Jungfrau, 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 rapidity has been on the increase; for in 1830 the cabin was only some hundred feet from the rock, in 1836 it had already passed over a distance from [word torn away] of two thousand feet, and in the last three years it has again doubled that distance. Not only have I confirmed my views upon glaciers and their attendant phenomena, on this new ground, but I have completed my examination of a number of details, and have had besides the satisfaction of convincing one of my most severe opponents of the exactness of my observations, namely, M. Studer, who accompanied me on a part of these excursions. . .
The winter of 1840 was fully occupied by the preparation for the publication of the "Etudes sur les Glaciers," which appeared before the year was out, accompanied by an atlas of thirty-two plates. The volume of text consisted of an historical resume of all that had previously been done in the study of glaciers, followed by an account of the observations of Agassiz and his companions during the last three or four years upon the glaciers of the Alps. Their structure, external aspect, needles, tables, perched blocks, gravel cones, rifts, and crevasses, as well as their movements, mode of formation, and internal temperature, were treated in succession. But the most interesting chapters, from the author's own point of view, and those which 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 upon this frozen shore (if, indeed, it was reached by them), were met only by the breath of the winter from the north and the thunders of the crevasses as they opened across the surface of this icy sea."* (* "Etudes sur les Glaciers" Chapter 8 page 35.) The author goes on to state that on the breaking up of this universal shroud the ice must have lingered longest in mountainous strongholds, and that all these fastnesses of retreat became, as the Alps are now, centres of distribution for the broken debris and rocky fragments which are found scattered with a kind of regularity along certain lines, and over given areas in northern and central Europe. How he followed out this idea in his subsequent investigations will be seen hereafter.
Summer Station on the Glacier of the Aar.Hotel des Neuchatelois.Members of the Party.Work on the Glacier.Ascent of the Strahleck and the Siedelhorn.Visit to England.Search for Glacial Remains in Great Britain.Roads of Glen Roy.Views of English Naturalists concerning Agassiz's Glacial Theory.Letter from Humboldt.Winter Visit to Glacier.Summer of 1841 on the Glacier.Descent into the Glacier.Ascent of the Jungfrau.
In the summer of 1840 Agassiz made his first permanent station on the Alps. Hitherto the external phenomena, the relation of the ice to its surroundings, and its influence upon them, had been the chief study. Now the glacier itself was to be the main subject of investigation, and he took with him a variety of instruments for testing temperatures: barometers, thermometers, hygrometers, and psychometers; beside a boring apparatus, by means of which self-registering thermometers might be lowered into the heart of the glacier. To these were added microscopes for the study of such insects and plants as might be found in these ice-bound regions. The Hospice of the Grimsel was selected as his base of supplies, and as guides Jacob Leuthold and Johann Wahren were chosen. Both of these had accompanied Hugi in his ascension of the Finsteraarhorn in 1828, and both were therefore thoroughly familiar with all the dangers of Alpine climbing. The lower Aar glacier was to be the scene of their continuous work, and the centre from which their ascents of the neighboring summits would be made. Here, on the great median moraine, stood a huge boulder of micaceous schist. Its upper surface projected so as to form a roof, and by closing it in on one side with a stone wall, leveling the floor by a judicious arrangement of flat slabs, and rigging a blanket in front to serve as a curtain across the entrance, the whole was presently transformed into a rude hut, where six persons could find sleeping-room. A recess, sheltered by the rock outside, served as kitchen and dining-room; while an empty space under another large boulder was utilized as a cellar for the keeping of provisions. This was the abode so well known afterward as the Hotel des Neuchatelois. Its first occupants were Louis Agassiz, Edouard Desor, Charles Vogt, Francois de Pourtales, Celestin Nicolet, and Henri Coulon. It afforded, perhaps, as good a shelter as they could have found in the old cabin of Hugi, where they had hoped to make their temporary home. In this they were disappointed, for the cabin had crumbled on its last glacial journey. The wreck was lying two hundred feet below the spot where they had seen the walls still standing the year before.
The work was at once distributed among the different members of the party,—Agassiz himself, assisted by his young friend and favorite pupil, Francois de Pourtales, retaining for his own share the meteorological observations, and especially those upon the internal temperature of the glaciers.* (* See "Tables of Temperature, Measurements" etc., in Agassiz's "Systeme Glaciaire". These results are also recorded in a volume entitled "Sejours dans les Glaciers", by Edouard Desor, a collection of very bright and entertaining articles upon the excursions and sojourns made in the Alps, during successive summers, by Agassiz and his scientific staff.) To M. Vogt fell the microscopic study of the red snow and the organic life contained in it; to M. Nicolet, the flora of the glaciers and the surrounding rocks; to M. Desor, the glacial phenomena proper, including those of the moraines. He had the companionship and assistance of M. Henri Coulon in the long and laborious excursions required for this part of the work.
This is not the place for scientific details. For the results of Agassiz's researches on the Alpine glaciers, to which he devoted much of his time and energy during ten years, from 1836 to 1846, the reader is referred to his two larger works on this subject, the "Etudes sur les Glaciers," and the "Systeme Glaciaire." Of the work accomplished by him and his companions during these years this slight summary is given by his friend Guyot.* (* See Biographical Sketch, published by Professor A. Guyot, under the auspices of the United States National Academy.) "The position of eighteen of the most prominent rocks on the glacier was determined by careful triangulation by a skillful engineer, and measured year after year to establish the rate of motion of every part. The differences in the rate of motion in the upper and lower part of the glacier, as well as in different seasons of the year, was ascertained; the amount of the annual melting was computed, and all the phenomena connected with it studied. All the surrounding peaks,—the Jungfrau, the Schreckhorn, the Finsteraarhorn, most of them until then reputed unscalable,—were ascended, and the limit of glacial action discovered; in short all the physical laws of the glacier were brought to light."
We now return to the personal narrative. After a number of days spent in the study of the local phenomena, the band of workers turned their attention to the second part of their programme, namely, the ascent of the Strahleck, by crossing which and descending on the other side, they intended to reach Grindelwald. One morning, then, toward the end of August, their guides, according to agreement, aroused them at three o'clock,—an hour earlier than their usual roll-call. The first glance outside spread a general chill of disappointment over the party, for they found themselves beleaguered by a wall of fog on every side. But Leuthold, as he lighted the fire and prepared breakfast, bade them not despair,—the sun might make all right. In a few moments, one by one, the summits of the Schreckhorn, the Finsteraarhorn, the Oberaarhorn, the Altmaner, the Scheuchzerhorn, lighted by the first rays of the sun, came out like islands above the ocean of mist, which softly broke away and vanished with the advancing light. In about three hours they reached the base of the Strahleck. Their two guides, Leuthold and Wahren, had engaged three additional men for this excursion, so that they now had five guides, none of whom were superfluous, since they carried with them various barometric instruments which required careful handling. They began the ascent in single file, but the slopes soon became so steep and the light snow (in which they floundered to the knees at every step) so deep, that the guides resorted to the usual method in such cases of tying them all together. The two head guides alone, Leuthold and Wahren, remained detached, clearing the snow in front of them, cutting steps in the ice, and giving warning, by cry and gesture, of any hidden danger in the path. At nine o'clock, after an hour's climbing, they stepped upon the small plateau, evenly covered with unbroken snow, formed by the summit of the Strahleck.
The day had proved magnificent. With a clear sky above them, they looked down upon the valley of Grindelwald at their feet, while around and below them gathered the Scheideck and the Faulhorn, the pyramidal outline of the Niesen, and the chain of the Stockhorn. In front lay the great masses of the Eiger and the Monch, while to the southwest the Jungfrau rose above the long chain of the Viescherhorner. The first pause of silent wonder and delight, while they released themselves from their cords and arranged their instruments, seems to have been succeeded by an outburst of spirits; for in the journal of the youngest of the party, Francois de Pourtales, then a lad of seventeen, we read: "The guides began to wrestle and we to dance, when suddenly we saw a female chamois, followed by her young, ascending a neighboring slope, and presently four or five more stretched their necks over a rock, as if to see what was going on. Breathless the wrestlers and the dancers paused, fearing to disturb by the slightest movement creatures so shy of human approach. They drew nearer until within easy gunshot distance, and then galloping along the opposite ridge disappeared over the summit."
The party passed more than an hour on the top of the Strahleck, making observations and taking measurements. Then having rested and broken their fast with such provisions as they had brought, they prepared for a descent, which proved the more rapid, since much of it was a long slide. Tied together once more, they slid, wherever they found it possible to exchange the painful and difficult walking for this simpler process. "Once below these slopes of snow," says the journal of young de Pourtales again, "rocks almost vertical, or narrow ledges covered with grass, served us as a road and brought us to the glacier of the Grindelwald. To reach the glacier itself we traversed a crevasse of great depth, and some twenty feet wide; on a bridge of ice, one or two feet in width, and broken toward the end, where we were obliged to spring across. Once on the glacier the rest was nothing. The race was to the fastest, and we were soon on the path of the tourists." Reaching the village of Grindelwald at three o'clock in the afternoon, they found it difficult to persuade the people at the inn that they had left the glacier of the Aar that morning. From Grindelwald they returned by the Scheideck to the Grimsel, visiting on their way the upper glacier of Grindelwald, the glacier of Schwartzwald, and that of Rosenlaui, in order to see how far these had advanced since their last visit to them. After a short rest at the Hospice of the Grimsel, Agassiz returned with two or three of his companions to their hut on the Aar glacier for the purpose of driving stakes into the holes previously bored in the ice. He hoped by means of these stakes to learn the following year what had been the rate of movement of the glacier. The summer's work closed with the ascent of the Siedelhorn. In all these ascents, the utmost pains was taken to ascertain how far the action of the ice might be traced upon these mountain peaks and the limits determined at which the polished surfaces ceased, giving place to the rough, angular rock which had never been modeled by the ice.