It was two o'clock at night when he left his home of so many years. There had been a general sadness at the thought of his departure, and every testimony of affection and respect accompanied him. The students came in procession with torch-lights to give him a parting serenade, and many of his friends and colleagues were also present to bid him farewell. M. Louis Favre says in his Memoir, "Great was the emotion at Neuchatel when the report was spread abroad that Agassiz was about to leave for a long journey. It is true he promised to come back, but the New World might shower upon him such marvels that his return could hardly be counted upon. The young people, the students, regretted their beloved professor not only for his scientific attainments, but for his kindly disposition, the charm of his eloquence, the inspiration of his teaching; they regretted also the gay, animated, untiring companion of their excursions, who made them acquainted with nature, and knew so well how to encourage and interest them in their studies." Pausing at Carlsruhe on his journey, he proceeded thence to Paris, where he was welcomed with the greatest cordiality by scientific men. In recognition of his work on the "Fossil Fishes" the Monthyon Prize of Physiology was awarded him by the Academy. He felt this distinction the more because the bearing of such investigations upon experimental physiology had never before been pointed out, and it showed that he had succeeded in giving a new direction and a more comprehensive character to paleontological research. He passed some months in Paris, busily occupied with the publication of the "Systeme Glaciaire," his second work on the glacial phenomena. The "Etudes sur les Glaciers" had simply contained a resume of all the researches undertaken upon the Alpine fields of ice and the results obtained up to 1840, inclusive of the author's own work and his wider interpretation of the facts. The "Systeme Glaciaire" was, on the contrary, an account of a connected plan of investigation during a succession of years, upon a single glacier, with its geodetic and topographic features, its hydrography, its internal structure, its atmospheric conditions, its rate of annual and diurnal progress, and its relations to surrounding glaciers. All the local phenomena, so far as they could be observed, were subjected to a strict scrutiny, and the results corrected by careful comparison, during five seasons. As we have seen, and as Agassiz himself says in his Preface, this band of workers had "lived in the intimacy of the glacier, striving to draw from it the secret of its formation and its annual advance." The work was accompanied by three maps and nine plates. In such a volume of detail there is no room for picturesque description, and little is told of the wonderful scenes they witnessed by day and night, nothing of personal peril and adventure.