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THE JOURNAL OF GEOLOGY.

lectures in which he suggested to his assistants the possibility of the South American continent having been glaciated, and reminded them that this was one of the important subjects for their investigation.^[1]

I subsequently learned from Professor Hartt, who was one of the assistants, that these lectures prepared them to be convinced that glaciation had taken place in Brazil, though he himself was rather inclined to believe otherwise.

Mrs. Agassiz's book shows throughout how Professor Agassiz found on every hand, from the time he landed in Brazil till he left there, what he regarded as evidences of glacial action. In the mountains about Rio de Janeiro he found erratic boulders (pp. 86 et seq.); at Ereré, in the Amazon valley, he found "the only genuine erratic boulders I have seen in the whole length of the Amazon valley," (p. 418); he declared that "il n'y a pas trace des terrains tertiaires"^[2] in that region, while the horizontal sediments of that valley he explained as silts thrown down in cold glacial waters behind a vast terminal moraine that stretched across the mouth of the valley (p. 426), and of which the island of Marajo was supposed to be a remnant; the table-topped hills he explained as the remnants of sediments left when this great dam broke, and the waters swept the greater part of the beds out to sea.

The lateral moraine on the south side of this great glacier he expected to find in the interior of Ceará (p. 447-8); he went to Ceará, and found at Pacatúba, near the coast, what he regarded as glacial phenomena "as legible as any of the valleys of Maine,

↑ A Journey to Brazil, by Professor and Mrs. Louis Agassiz, Boston, 1868, 15.In Mrs. Agassiz's Life and Correspondence of Louis Agassiz, Boston, 1886, II., 633, it is further stated that Agassiz was confirmed "in his preconceived belief that the glacial period could not have been less than cosmic in its influence."
↑ Bul. de la Soc. Géologique de France, XXIV., 110.In a letter to Élie de Beaumont, he speaks of these beds as loess, but he gives no specific explanation of their formation.Comptes Rendus de l'Acad. des Sciences, 1867, 1269.Professor Agassiz first published his paper on the Physical History of the Amazon valley in the Atlantic Monthly for July and August, 1866; it was also published subsequently in his Geological Sketches, sec. ser.Boston, 1886.II., 153 et seq., and in the Journey to Brazil.

[1] A Journey to Brazil, by Professor and Mrs. Louis Agassiz, Boston, 1868, 15.In Mrs. Agassiz's Life and Correspondence of Louis Agassiz, Boston, 1886, II., 633, it is further stated that Agassiz was confirmed "in his preconceived belief that the glacial period could not have been less than cosmic in its influence."

[2] Bul. de la Soc. Géologique de France, XXIV., 110.In a letter to Élie de Beaumont, he speaks of these beds as loess, but he gives no specific explanation of their formation.Comptes Rendus de l'Acad. des Sciences, 1867, 1269.Professor Agassiz first published his paper on the Physical History of the Amazon valley in the Atlantic Monthly for July and August, 1866; it was also published subsequently in his Geological Sketches, sec. ser.Boston, 1886.II., 153 et seq., and in the Journey to Brazil.

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