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SUPPOSED GLACIATION OF BRAZIL.
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or in those of the valleys of Cumberland in England" (pp. 456, 463).

Naturally enough these views were received in the scientific world with incredulity. As Mr. Wallace remarks, "Prof. Agassiz was thought to be glacier-mad,"[1] but his earlier observations on glaciers had been received with quite as much doubt,[2] so that the doubts have nothing to do with the case one way or the other.

Professor Chas. Fred. Hartt states in his book[3] that he was at first very skeptical about Brazilian glaciation, but that he was finally obliged to yield to the evidence collected by himself, and to confess that Agassiz was right.

It should perhaps be mentioned here, that there is a general impression that when Hartt wrote his book on the geology of Brazil, he had spent several years, and traveled widely in that country, and that the conclusions given by him are the results of all his Brazilian work. This is far from being the case. When he wrote the Geology and Physical Geography of Brazil, he had spent only a year and a half in that country; on his first trip he arrived at Rio de Janeiro, April 23, 1865, and left it on July of the following year;[4] on his second trip, he reached Pará, July 11, 1867,[5] and returned from Rio in September of that year,[6] making in all not more than eighteen months spent in that country up to the time his book went to press. The belief in the glaciation of Brazil, as there expressed, is therefore based on upon his earliest and least trustworthy work in that region. Hartt fully recognized this afterwards, and I have often heard him say, "I wish I had known as much about geology when I wrote that book as I know now."

He subsequently made several trips to Brazil; in one to the

  1. ↑ Nature, II., 511.Lyell's Principles of Geology, New York, 1889, 1, 466.
  2. ↑ Bul. de la Soc. Géol. de France, 1867-8, XXV., 685.
  3. ↑ Geology and Physical Geography of Brazil, Boston, 1873, 29.
  4. ↑ Agassiz, Journey, 46 and 540.
  5. ↑ American Naturalist, I., 648.
  6. ↑ Geology and Physical Geography, 201.
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