Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence Part 12

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 a.n.a.lytical 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 acc.u.mulating on your hands. Continue then as before. In my judgment, M. Aga.s.siz never does wrong. . .

The above letter, though written in May, did not reach Aga.s.siz until the end of July, when he was again on his way to England, where his answer is dated.

AGa.s.sIZ TO HUMBOLDT.

(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 pa.s.sage 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 a.s.sociation, 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 ident.i.ty, 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 a.s.sociation 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 Aga.s.siz 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 Cla.s.s 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 Aga.s.siz,--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.

Aga.s.siz 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 pa.s.sed 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 princ.i.p.al 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 Aga.s.siz to retain the services of Mr. d.i.n.kel, 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, Aga.s.siz'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 a.s.sociation a.s.sembled 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 a.s.sumed a cosmic significance. It is worthy of remark here that the first large outlines in which Aga.s.siz, 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 ma.s.s of ice, at the maximum of tension, the greatest possible hardness." In this novel presentation the distribution of erratic boulders, instead of being cla.s.sed 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 Aga.s.siz. 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, Aga.s.siz'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 Aga.s.siz 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 Aga.s.siz away from his ichthyological researches.

HUMBOLDT TO AGa.s.sIZ.

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, Aga.s.siz 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 pa.s.sage upon the bony rays, and, dear Aga.s.siz, 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 amba.s.sadors 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 amba.s.sadors in partibus, and great severity toward the book-sellers, an infernal race, two or three of whom have been killed under me.

A. DE HUMBOLDT.

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 Aga.s.siz's heterodox geology, he was in full sympathy with his work in general.

LEOPOLD VON BUCH TO LOUIS AGa.s.sIZ.

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 a.n.a.logies 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. . .

CHAPTER 9.

1837-1839: AGE 30-32.

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 Sh.e.l.ls.

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 Aga.s.siz'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.

M. AUGUSTE DE LA RIVE TO LOUIS AGa.s.sIZ.

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 a.s.sistance 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 circ.u.mstance 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 circ.u.mlocution, 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. Prompt.i.tude and silence, then, are the two recommendations which I make to you while we await the Yes we so greatly desire. . .