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[665] We can no longer evade the question by supposing these phenomena to be due to the action of great currents. We have to do first with sheets of ice, five or six thousand feet in thickness (an estimate which can be tested by indirect measurements in the Northern States), covering the whole continent, and then with the great currents which ensued upon the breaking up of that mass of ice. He who does not distinguish between these two series of facts, and perceive their connection, does not understand the geology of the Quaternary epoch. . .


Of about this date is the following pleasant letter from Longfellow to Agassiz. Although it has no special bearing upon what precedes, it is inserted here, because their near neighborhood and constant personal intercourse, both at Cambridge and Nahant, made letters rare between them. Friends who see each other so often are infrequent correspondents.

Rome, December 31, 1868.
my dear Agassiz,—I fully intended to write you from Switzerland, that my letter might come to you like a waft of cool air from a glacier in the heat of summer. But


Houghton, Mifflin and company, New York, Boston, 1885.

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