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.
地質學會的領導人、劍橋大學教授威廉·霍普金斯對此持同樣的觀點。他說，“冰川可以移動巖石的觀點從機械力學的角度來看實在荒唐”，根本不值得引起她質學會的注意。
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.
阿加西斯并沒有氣餒，他不知疲倦地多方奔走，四處游說，宣傳他的理論。1840年，他在格拉斯哥英國科學促進協會的一次會議上宣讀了他的一篇論文，卻遭到偉大的查爾斯·萊爾的當眾批評。次年，愛丁堡地質學會通過了一項決議，承認阿加西斯的理論中也許有某些合理的成分，但可以肯定的是，它根本不適用于蘇格蘭地區。
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.
萊爾最終改變了立場。他的頓悟出現在某一天，他突然意識到，在他蘇格蘭住所附近的一堆冰磧石——由一長串巖石組成，他已經效百次從旁邊經過——之所以矗立在那里，惟一說得通的解釋就是冰川把它們搬到了那里。但是，即便他內心已有所轉變，萊爾沒有勇氣，不敢公開支持冰川時代理論。對于阿加西斯來說，那是一段極為難熬的時期。他的婚姻破裂了，希姆帕爾強烈譴責他剽竊了自己的研究成果，夏龐蒂埃不同他說話，而萊爾這位在世的最偉大的地質學家盡管支持他的理論，可是用的都是不冷不熱、游移不定的語調。
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，阿加西斯到美國作系列演說，并在那兒贏得了他渴望已久的榮譽。哈佛大學聘請他為教授，并且為他建立了一個堪稱一流的比較動物學博物館。
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