万物简史 第609期:冰河时代(6)（在线收听）

William Hopkins, a Cambridge professor and leading member of the Geological Society, endorsed this view, arguing that the notion that ice could transport boulders presented "such obvious mechanical absurdities" as to make it unworthy of the society's attention.

地质学会的领导人、剑桥大学教授威廉·霍普金斯对此持同样的观点。他说，“冰川可以移动岩石的观点从机械力学的角度来看实在荒唐”，根本不值得引起她质学会的注意。

Undaunted, Agassiz traveled tirelessly to promote his theory. In 1840 he read a paper to a meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science in Glasgow at which he was openly criticized by the great Charles Lyell. The following year the Geological Society of Edinburgh passed a resolution conceding that there might be some general merit in the theory but that certainly none of it applied to Scotland.

阿加西斯并没有气馁，他不知疲倦地多方奔走，四处游说，宣传他的理论。1840年，他在格拉斯哥英国科学促进协会的一次会议上宣读了他的一篇论文，却遭到伟大的查尔斯·莱尔的当众批评。次年，爱丁堡地质学会通过了一项决议，承认阿加西斯的理论中也许有某些合理的成分，但可以肯定的是，它根本不适用于苏格兰地区。

Lyell did eventually come round. His moment of epiphany came when he realized that a moraine, or line of rocks, near his family estate in Scotland, which he had passed hundreds of times, could only be understood if one accepted that a glacier had dropped them there. But having become converted, Lyell then lost his nerve and backed off from public support of the Ice Age idea. It was a frustrating time for Agassiz. His marriage was breaking up, Schimper was hotly accusing him of the theft of his ideas, Charpentier wouldn't speak to him, and the greatest living geologist offered support of only the most tepid and vacillating kind.

莱尔最终改变了立场。他的顿悟出现在某一天，他突然意识到，在他苏格兰住所附近的一堆冰碛石——由一长串岩石组成，他已经效百次从旁边经过——之所以矗立在那里，惟一说得通的解释就是冰川把它们搬到了那里。但是，即便他内心已有所转变，莱尔没有勇气，不敢公开支持冰川时代理论。对于阿加西斯来说，那是一段极为难熬的时期。他的婚姻破裂了，希姆帕尔强烈谴责他剽窃了自己的研究成果，夏庞蒂埃不同他说话，而莱尔这位在世的最伟大的地质学家尽管支持他的理论，可是用的都是不冷不热、游移不定的语调。

In 1846, Agassiz traveled to America to give a series of lectures and there at last found the esteem he craved. Harvard gave him a professorship and built him a first-rate museum, the Museum of Comparative Zoology.

1846年，阿加西斯到美国作系列演说，并在那儿赢得了他渴望已久的荣誉。哈佛大学聘请他为教授，并且为他建立了一个堪称一流的比较动物学博物馆。