27 ICE TIME
, once triations, telltale strand lines point to passing ice ss. Unfortunately, ton a traveler.
But even ter at s, ton rejected out of up mountainsides byfloods—all ter in t make a boulder float, ed out—and becameone of t to argue for ion. Unfortunately ice, andfor anotury most naturalists continued to insist t ttributed to passing carts or even ts.
Local peasants, uncontaminated by scientific ortter, uralist Jean de Cier told tory of rylane ter o talking about tter matter-of-factly told te some distance a tones ion, ation: ‘transported t glacier extended in t as far as town of Bern.’ ”
Cier scientific gat friends uralist, Louis Agassiz, ial skepticism came to embrace,and eventually all but appropriate, theory.
Agassiz udied under Cuvier in Paris and nouralory at tel in Szerland. Anotanistnamed Karl Scually t to coin term ice age (in German Eiszeit ), in1837, and to propose t to s ice just t over muc ion. Agassiz es—to regret it as Agassizincreasingly got t for imacy, was heory.
Cier liketer enemy of , yetanot least partly in mind ages in scientific discovery: first, people deny t it is true; t it isimportant; finally t the wrong person.
At all events, Agassiz made t to understand tion, everyo ts of t Alpine peaks, often apparently una eam to climbtered an unyielding reluctance to accept heories.
urged o return to ise, fossil fis Agassiz was a man possessed by an idea.
Agassiz’s t in Britain, uralists en