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fields of ice and the results obtained up to 1840, inclusive of the author's own work and his wider interpretation of the facts.
The ‘Systeme Glaciaire’ was, on the contrary, an account of a connected plan of investigation during a succession of years, upon a single glacier, with its geodetic and topographic features, its hydrography, its internal structure, its atmospheric conditions, its rate of annual and diurnal progress, and its relations to surrounding glaciers.
All the local phenomena, so far as they could be observed, were subjected to a strict scrutiny, and the results corrected by careful comparison, during five seasons.
As we have seen, and as Agassiz himself says in his Preface, this band of workers had ‘lived in the intimacy of the glacier, striving to draw from it the secret of its formation and its annual advance.’
The work was accompanied by three maps and nine plates.
In such a volume of detail there is no room for picturesque description, and little is told of the wonderful scenes they witnessed by day and night, nothing of personal peril and adventure.
This task concluded, he went to England, where he was to spend the few remaining days previous to his departure.
Among the
Houghton, Mifflin and company, New York, Boston, 1885.
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