AGASSIZ, LOUIS - FOUNDING MODERN GLACIAL GEOLOGY.
Sur les blocs erratiques du Jura. Extrait d'une lettre de M. Agassic.(Séance du Lundi 2 Octobre 1837).
(Paris, Bachelier), 1837.
4to. Without wrappers. In "Comptes rendus hebdomadaires des séances de l’Académie des sciences", Vol. 5, No 14. Pp. (491-) 514. (Entire issue offered). Agassiz's paper: pp. 506-508.
First printing in France of Agassiz' founding paper - starting the the study of ancient glaciation - in glaciology in which he outlines his thesis that there was an earlier geological period with widespread ice-age conditions extending from the North Pole to the Mediterranean and Caspian Seas. he concluded that the Alpine ice, now restricted to the higher valleys, once extended into the central plain, crossed it, and even mounted to the southern summits of the Jura chain. Agassiz here adopts the term "ice age" coined in 1836 by Karl Schimper as 'Eiszeit'. Agassiz submitted the offered paper to the French Academy after he in his opening address as President of the Swiss Society of Natural History in 1837 (its Séance July 1837) in his famous "Discourse at Neuchatel" gave an exposition of the evidence of glaciation. The paper offered is his own, but briefer, exposition of the famous address to the Swiss Society.
Parkinson "Breakthroughs" 1837 G.
Order-nr.: 59116
DKK 5.000,00