Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 5.djvu/468

452 I would, however, ask Mr. Forbes to consider whether I, while endeavoring to hold the balance fairly between contending claims, should have been justified in accepting his father's assertion and ignoring the diametrically opposite assertion of Agassiz? On this point I would direct his attention to two sources of information; the one probably known to him, the other unknown, and which the desire not to inflame this controversy has prevented me from publishing hitherto.

In the first place, I will make a brief extract from a very rare brochure published by Agassiz, in evident affliction of mind, in 1842. In that pamphlet he addresses thus his guest of the previous autumn:

I was in duty bound to give due weight to this side of the question; and in 1869, prior to the publication of the "Glaciers of the Alps," I wrote to M. Agassiz, inquiring whether he still maintained the position here assumed; which, it will be seen, not only touches, but is, the very point brought forward by Prof. George Forbes. I will give the pith of his reply, which, as just intimated, has lain beside me unpublished for fifteen years. After sketching the "incredible difficulties" of his early glacier campaigns, his uncertainty regarding the measurement of the motion of bowlders, his failure on the Aar, and Escher's failure on the Aletsch, to determine the motion of a series of stakes fixed in 1840, because, through ignorance of the amount of ablation, they did not sink them deep enough in the ice, Agassiz answers me thus: