him pecuniary aid for his researches, and to Humboldt, after the glacier campaign of 1841 had ended, he addressed a private note, mentioning among other things his having seen the veins. I make no attempt at excusing his omission of the name of Forbes from this note; but, taking every thing into account, the sin of omission does not seem very heinous. Its effect upon Prof. Forbes shall be described by himself.
"I reached home," he says, "in the month of October, 1841, and soon commenced the historical review of the glacier question which I had projected. While I was thus engaged, the 'Comptes Rendus' of the Academy of Sciences in Paris for the 18th of October reached me. In it I found a letter from M. Agassiz to Baron Humboldt, containing the following passage with reference to the observations made upon the glacier of the Aar:
"'Le fait le plus nouveau que j'ai remarqué, c'est la présence dans la masse de la glace des rubans verticaux de glace bleue, alternant avec des bands de glace blanche d'un quart de ligne à plusieurs pouces de large, s'étendant sur toute la longueur du glacier et penetrant à une profondeur du moins 120 pieds puisque j'ai observé encore ce phénomène an fond du trou de sonde.'
"On reading this letter," says Principal Forbes, "from which even all mention of my presence on the Aar is excluded, my first impression was of surprise and pain. That I could not suffer so direct a plagiarism to remain unchallenged never appeared to me to admit of a doubt; le fait le plus nouveau que j'ai remarqué was an assertion as articulate as it was unfounded."
For nearly a month Prof. Forbes had shared the shelter of Agassiz's roof, and wandered with him among scenes of unsurpassed grandeur. He had found in his host "noble ardor, generous friendship, unvarying good temper, and true hospitality." It is upon the man thus described by himself that Prof. Forbes turns in this fierce way, for the mere omission of his name. It grieves me to say a word which could be interpreted as severe to a dead man; but the comparisons drawn by his panegyrist compel me to state that, among the eminent men whom it is my privilege to call my friends, there is not one to whom such an explosion of resentment for so purely personal—I had almost said paltry—a cause would be even approximately possible. I charge him with nothing consciously unfair; but from a man so hot in the assertion of his "claims," so sensitive to public recognition, and so free in the use of hard words, these interminable discussions run as naturally as rivers from their water-shed.
With more time at my disposal I should probably enter more fully into these matters; but this and my former article, taken in conjunction with the "Forms of Water," in which, even to the ignoring of myself, I desire to do justice both to Agassiz and Forbes, and the pages referred to in the "Glaciers of the Alps," will have so far cleared a dusty atmosphere as to enable any really earnest reader to see the bearings of this question. It now only rests with me to give some samples of those "terrible" and "tremendous" words to which Prof. Tait has referred, and which Prof. George Forbes has thought fit to
