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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.
Howe, one or two phrases in Agassiz's letters are interpolated from a third unfinished letter, which was never forwarded to Dr. Howe. These sentences connect themselves so directly with the sense of the previous letters that it seemed worth while to add them.
Said one of his admirers: "Why don't you go into practise? You could easily make a great fortune before you are forty." Listen to the answer: "Money does not interest me." We all remember Agassiz's famous reply to a proposition to deliver one lecture for a large fee: "I must decline, gentlemen; I have no time to make money." That was why he was Agassiz.
His scientific sympathy and support were of the greatest value to Agassiz during the rest of his life. A later new-corner, and a very important one at the Museum, was Dr. Franz Steindachner, of Vienna, who arrived in the spring of 1870 to put in final order the collection of Brazilian fishes, and passed two years in this country. Thus Agassiz's hands were doubly strengthened.
Humboldt's letters show that Agassiz did not willingly renounce the hope of making him a convert. Agassiz's own letters to Humboldt are missing from this time onward. Overwhelmed with occupation, and more at his ease in his relations with the older scientific men, he had ceased to make the rough drafts in which his earlier correspondence is recorded. BERLIN, March 2, 1842.
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.
Like a Greek statue in a luxurious drawing-room, sharp cut, cold, virginal; shaming, by the grandeur of mere form, the voluptuousness of mere colour, however rich and harmonious; so stands the palm in the forest; to be worshipped rather than to be loved. Look at the drawings of the Oreodoxa-avenue at Rio, in M. Agassiz's charming book.
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 from Humboldt, which shows that he too was beginning to look more leniently upon Agassiz's glacial conclusions. BERLIN, August 15, 1840. I am the most guilty of mortals, my dear friend.
Agassiz's note-books, preserved by his parents, who followed the education of their children with the deepest interest, give evidence of his faithful work both at school and college.
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.
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