_Contributions to the Natural History of the United States of
America_. By LOUIS AGASSIZ. Vols. I. and II. Boston: Little,
Brown & Co. London: Trübner & Co. 1857.
The Great Professor has given the first Monograph of his _Magnum Opus_
to the Great Republic and the wider realm of Science. The learned
world resolves itself into committees to consider every important
work; claiming leave to sit for as long a time as they choose,--for
years, or for a whole generation. Every alleged fact is to be
verified or cancelled or qualified, every inference to be measured
over and over again by its premises, every proposition to be tried
by all the tests that can prove its strength or weakness, and the
whole to be marshalled to the place it may claim in the alcoves of
the universal library. No hasty opinion can anticipate this final
and peremptory judgment. Its elements must of necessity be gathered
slowly from many and scattered sources. The accumulated learning of
the great centres of civilization, the patient investigation of
plodding observers, the keen insight of subtile analysts, the
jealous clairvoyance of dissentient theorists, the oblique glances
of suspicious sister-sciences, the random flashes that skepticism
throws from her faithless mirror to dazzle all eyes that seek for
truth; through such a varied and protracted ordeal must every record
that embodies long and profound observation, large and lofty thought,
reach the golden _Imprimatur_ which is its warrant for immortality.
The work of Mr. Agassiz, if we may judge it by the portion now
before us, has a right to challenge such a matured opinion, and to
wait for it. Not the less does a certain duty belong to us as
literary journalists with reference to these stately volumes, which
are in the hands of thousands, learned and unlearned, and of which
there are scores of thousands waiting to hear. Our duty we consider
to be four-fold: first, that of recognition in terms of fitting
courtesy; secondly, of analysis for the general reader; thirdly, of
accentuation, so to speak, of what seems most widely applicable or
interesting; and lastly, of making such comments as so pregnant a
text may suggest.
And first, of recognition. Here are the fruits of ten years of
patient labor, taken out of the heart of life, in the age of vigor,
which is that of ambition,--to use the phrase of another great
observer,--by a man of large endowments and of vast knowledge,
assisted by skilful collaborators, by finished artists, by the
counsels and liberality of the learned few, and the generous
countenance of the intelligent many. Before analysis, before
criticism, there should be uttered a welcome; not grudging, not
envious of an overshadowing reputation, not over-curious in
searching for qualifications to abate its warmth, not carefully
taming down its enthusiasm to tepid formalisms; but full-souled and
free-spoken, such as all noble works and deeds should claim.
The learned men of past centuries have left us an example of this
treatment of authors, in those gratulatory verses with which they
were wont to hail every considerable literary or scientific
performance. They knew human nature well. They knew that the author,
when he quenches the lamp over which he has grown haggard and pale,
and steps from his cell into daylight and the chill outside air,
longs, longs unutterably, for kind words, and the cheering
fellowship of kindred souls; and with instinctive grace they chose
the poetical form of expression, simply because this alone gives
full license to the lips of friendship.
This old folio which stands by us is not precious only because it
contains the quaint wisdom and manifold experience of Ambroise Paré,
mingled with his credulous gossip, and again sweetened by his simple
reverence; not precious alone because it contains the noblest words
ever uttered by one of his profession,--_Ie le pensay et Dieu le
guarit_; but also because PIERRE RONSARD, the "Poet of France," has
left his deathless name thrice inscribed in its earlier pages at the
foot of tributes to its author.
And here in the next century comes Schenck of Grafenberg, staggering
under his monstrous volume of "Casus Rariores,"--ready to fall
fainting by the wayside, when lo! the shining ones meet him too, and
lift him and lighten him with the utterance of these _fifty-one_
distinct poems which we see hung up on so many votive tablets at the
entrance of this miniature Babel of Science.
Even so late as the last century the genial custom survived; for our
worthy Stalpart van der Wiel, whose little pair of volumes was
published in 1727, can boast of twenty-two pages of well-ordered
commendatory verse, much of it in his native Dutch,--a little of
which goes a good way with all except Batavian readers.
But as the "Arundines Cami," musical as they are, have lent no
prelude to these harmonies of science, we must say in a few plain
words of prose our own first thought as to the work the commencement
of which lies before us. We believe, that, if completed according to
its promise, it is to be one of the monumental labors of our century.
Comparisons are not to be lightly instituted, and especially under
circumstances that do not allow a fair survey of the whole field
from which the objects to be compared are to be taken. We suppose,
however, it will be conceded that the sunset continent has never
witnessed anything like the inception of this mighty task in the way
of systematic natural science. And if, since Cuvier, the greatest of
naturalists, as Mr. Agassiz considers him, slept with the fossils to
which he had given life, there has been any other student of Nature
who has attempted a task so immense, with the same union of observing,
reflecting, analyzing, and coördinating power, we cannot name him.
Our civilization has a right to be proud of such an accession to its
thinking and laboring constituency; it is also bound to be grateful
for it, and to express its gratitude.
It is just one hundred years since another Swiss, the magnificent
Albert von Haller, gave to the world the first volume of the
"Elementa Physiologiae Corporis Humani." Nine years afterwards, in
1766, the last of the eight volumes appeared; and the vast structure,
which embodied his untiring study of Nature, his world-wide erudition,
his deepest thought, his highest imaginings, his holiest aspirations,
stood, like the Alps whose shadow fell upon its birthplace, the
lovely Lausaune, pride of the Pays de Vaud. The clepsydrae that
measure the centuries as they drop from the dizzy cliffs--the
glaciers, by the descent of which "time is marked out, as by a
shadow on a dial," and which thunder out the high noon of each
revolving year with their frozen tongues, as they crack beneath the
summer's sun--have registered a new centennial circle, and at the
very hour of its completion, Switzerland vindicates her ancient
renown in these fair pages, at once pledge and performance, of
another of her honored children. May the auspicious omen lead to as
happy a conclusion!
Lovingly, then, we lay open the generous quarto and look upon its
broad, bright title-page. It tells us that we have here the first of
a series of "Contributions to the Natural History of the United
States of America." We see that one of its three parts embraces the
largest generalities of Natural Science, under the head of an
"Essay on Classification." We see that the other two parts are
devoted to the description and delineation of a single order of
Reptilia,--the Testudinata, or "Turtles."
If Mr. Agassiz had intentionally chosen the simplest way of proving
that he had naturalized himself in New England, he could not have
selected more fortunately than he has done by adopting our word
_Turtle_ to cover all the Testudinates. To an Englishman a turtle
is a sea-monster, that for a brief space lies on his back and fights
the air with his useless paddles in the bow-window of a
provision-shop, bound eventually to Guildhall, there to feed Gog and
Magog, or his worshippers, known as aldermen. For him a
land-testudinate is a _tortoise_. When his poets and romancers speak
of turtles, again, they commonly mean turtle-_doves_.
"Not half so swift the sailing falcon flies
That drives a turtle through the liquid skies."
The only flight of a testudinate which we remember is that downward
one of the unfortunate tortoise that cracked the bald crown of
Aeschylus. But turtle, as embracing all chelonians, or, as liberal
shepherds call it, "turkle," is unquestionably Cisatlantic. The
distinguished naturalist has made himself an American citizen by
adopting our own expression, and should have the freedom of all our
cities presented to him in the shell of a box-TURTLE.
It is singular to recall the honors which have been bestowed on the
testudinates from all antiquity. It was the sun-dried and
sinew-strung shell of a tortoise that suggested the lyre to Mercury,
as he walked by the shore of Nilus. It was on the back of a tortoise
that the Indian sage placed his elephant which upheld the world.
Under the _testudo_ the Roman legions swarmed into the walled cities
of the _orbis terrarum_. And in that wise old fable which childhood
learns, and age too often remembers, sorrowing, it was the tortoise
that won the race against the swiftest of the smaller tribes, his
competitor.
And here once more we have his shell strung with vibrating thoughts
that repeat the harmonies of nature. Once more his broad back stoops
to the weighty problems which the planet proposes to its children.
Once more the great cities are stormed--by science--beneath his coat
of mail. Once more he has run the race, not against the hare only,
but the whole animal kingdom, and won it, and with it the new fame
which awaits him, as he leads in the long array of his fellows that
are to come up, one by one, in these enduring records. And so we
turn the leaf, and come to the DEDICATION.
The Dedication of a work like this, destined to preserve all the
names it enrols in the sculpture-like immortality of science,
naturally delays us for a moment. Of the foreign teacher and friend
to whom the author owes some of his earliest lessons, and of that
group of our own citizens, most of them still living, who lent their
united efforts to the enterprise of publication after it was
commenced, we need not speak individually. But we cannot pass over
the name of FRANCIS CALLEY GRAY without a word of grateful
remembrance for one who was the friend and adviser of the author
in planning the publication of the work before us. We who remember
his varied culture, his large and fluent discourse, with its
formidable accuracy of knowledge and gracious suavity of utterance,
his taste in literature and art, which made his home a suite of
princely cabinets, his generous and elegant hospitality, which
scholars and artists knew so well,--counting him as the peer, and in
many points the more than peer of such as the wide world of letters
is proud to claim,--are pleased to see that his cherished name will
be read by the students of unborn generations on the first leaf of
this noble record of the science of our own.
The PREFACE which follows the Dedication is full of grateful
acknowledgments to the many friends of science, in all parts of the
country, who came forward to lend their aid in various forms,
especially in collecting and transmitting specimens from the
most widely remote sections of the continent. The pious zeal of
Mr. Winthrop Sargent, who brought a cargo of living turtles more
than a thousand miles to the head-quarters of testudinous learning
at Cambridge, is only paralleled by the memorable act of the Pisans
in transporting ship-loads of holy soil from Palestine to fill their
Campo Santo. Genius is marked by nothing more distinctly than that
it makes the world its tributary. He from whose lips it speaks has
but to look calmly into the eyes of dull routine, of jaded toil, of
fickle childhood, and utter the words, "Follow me." Custom-house
officials close their books, tired fishermen leave their nets,
riotous boys forsake their play, to do the master's bidding. Is he
making collections for some great purpose of study? Piece by piece
the fragmentary spoils flow in upon him, of all sizes, shapes, and
hues; a chaos of confused riches, perhaps only a wealth of rubbish,
as they lie at his feet. One by one they fall into harmonious
relations, until the meaningless heap has become a vast mosaic,
where nothing is too minute to fill some interstice, nothing too
angular to fit some corner, nothing so dull or brilliant of tint
that it will not furnish its fraction of light or shadow. Such has
been the history of those years of labor the results of which these
volumes present to us. Whatever may have been said of the devotion
of our countrymen to material interests, the wise and winning lips
had only to speak, and such a currency of _plastrons_ and _carapaces_
was set in circulation, that the contemplative stranger who saw the
mighty coinage of Chelonia flowing in upon Cambridge might well have
thought that the national idea was not the Almighty Dollar, but the
Almighty Turtle.
Mr. Agassiz places a high estimate on the intelligence as well as
the kind spirit of his adopted countrymen. "There is not a class of
learned men here," he says, "distinct from the other cultivated
members of the community. On the contrary, so general is the desire
for knowledge, that I expect to see my book read by operatives, by
fishermen, by farmers, quite as extensively as by the students of
our colleges, or by the learned professions; and it is but proper
that I should endeavor to make myself understood by all."
The deficiencies of our scientific libraries, and the want of a
class of elementary works upon Natural History, such as are widely
circulated in Europe, are adverted to and alleged as a reason for
entering into details which the professional naturalist might think
misplaced.
We quote one paragraph entire from the Preface, as not susceptible
of being abridged, and as briefly stating those general facts with
regard to the work which all our readers must desire to know.
"I have a few words more to say respecting the two first volumes,
now ready for publication. Considering the uncertainty of human life,
I have wished to bring out at once a work that would exemplify the
nature of the investigations I have been tracing during the last ten
years, and show what is likely to be the character of the whole
series. I have aimed, therefore, in preparing these two volumes, to
combine them in such a manner as that they should form a whole. The
First Part contains an exposition of the general views I have
arrived at thus far, in my studies of Natural History. The Second
Part shows how I have attempted to apply these results to the
special study of Zoology, taking the order of Testudinata as an
example. I believe, that, in America, where turtles are everywhere
common, and greatly diversified, a student could not make a better
beginning than by a careful perusal of this part, specimens in hand,
with constant reference to the second chapter of the First Part. The
Third Part exemplifies the bearing of Embryology upon these general
questions, while it contains the fullest illustration of the
embryonic growth of the Testudinata."
The Preface closes with honorable mention of the gentlemen who have
furnished direct assistance in the preparation of the work, and
especially of Mr. Clark in microscopic observation and illustration,
and of Mr. Sonrel in drawing the zoological figures.
The LIST OF SUBSCRIBERS is not without its special meaning and
interest. If, as has been said, the grade of civilization in any
community can be estimated by the amount of sulphuric acid it
consumes, the extent to which a work like this has been called for
in different sections of the country may to some extent be
considered an index of its intellectual aspirations, if not of its
actual progress. This is especially true of those remoter regions
where personal motives would exercise least influence. But without
instituting any comparisons, we may well be proud of this ample list
of twenty-five hundred subscribers, most of them citizens of the
republic,--"a support such as was never before offered to any
scientific man for purely scientific ends, without any reference to
government objects or direct practical aims."
Our analysis must confine itself mainly to the first of the three
parts into which these two volumes are divided. This first part it
is that contains those large results which every thinker must desire
to learn from one whose life has been devoted to the searching and
contemplative study of Nature. It is in the realm of thought here
explored, that Natural Science, whose figure we are wont to look
down upon, crouching to her task, like him of the muck-rake, as he
painfully gathers together his sticks and straws, rises erect, and
lifts her forehead into the upper atmosphere of philosophy, where
the clouds are indeed thickest, but the stars are nearest. The
second and third parts belong more exclusively to the professed
students of Natural History in its different special departments.
Our notice of these divisions of the work must therefore be
comparatively brief.
The first chapter of the first part has for its title, "The
fundamental relations of animals to one another and to the world in
which they live, as the basis of the natural system of animals."
Certain general doctrines, the spirit of which runs through all the
scientific works of Mr. Agassiz, are distinctly laid down in the
first section of this chapter. It is headed with the statement,
"The leading features of a natural zoological system are all founded
in nature." The systems named from the great leaders of science are
but translations of the Creator's thoughts into human language.
"If it can be proved that man has not invented, but only traced this
systematic arrangement in nature,--that these relations and
proportions which exist throughout the animal and vegetable world
have an intellectual, an ideal connection in the mind of the Creator,--
that this plan of creation, which so commends itself to our highest
wisdom, has not grown out of the necessary action of physical laws,
but was the free conception of the Almighty Intellect, matured in
his thought, before it was manifested in tangible, external forms,--
if, in short, we can prove premeditation prior to the act of creation,
we have done, once and forever, with the desolate theory which
refers us to the laws of matter as accounting for all the wonders of
the universe, and leaves us with no God but the monotonous, unvarying
action of physical forces, binding all things to their inevitable
destiny."
One more extract must be given from this section, for it is the key
to the general argument which follows.
"I disclaim every intention of introducing in this work any evidence
irrelevant to my subject, or of supporting any conclusions not
immediately flowing from it; but I cannot overlook nor disregard
here the close connection there is between the facts ascertained by
scientific investigations, and the discussions now carried on
respecting the origin of organized beings. And though I know those
who hold it to be very unscientific to believe that thinking is not
something inherent in matter, and that there is an essential
difference between inorganic and living and thinking beings, I shall
not be prevented by any such pretensions of a false philosophy from
expressing my conviction, that, as long as it cannot be shown that
matter or physical forces do actually reason, I shall consider any
manifestation of thought as evidence of the existence of a thinking
being as the author of such thought, and shall look upon an
intelligent and intelligible connection between the facts of nature
as direct proof of the existence of a thinking God, as certainly as
man exhibits the power of thinking when he recognizes their natural
relations."
We must content ourselves with the most general statement of the
nature and bearing of the series of propositions which follow. They
are illustrated by a large survey of the material universe in its
manifestations of life, and of the relations between the various
forms of life to each other and to the inorganic world. These
propositions, thirty-one in number, might be called an analysis of
the qualities of the Infinite Mind exhibited in the realm of
organized and especially of animal being. Nothing but want of space
prevents our reproducing at full length the very careful
recapitulation to be found at the close of the chapter, or the
analysis to be found in the Table of Contents. With something more
of labor than the task of copying would have been, we have attempted
to compress the truths already crowded in these brief and pregnant
sentences into the still narrower compass of a few lines in our
straitened pages.
The harmony of the universe is a manifestation of illimitable
intellect, displaying itself in various modes of thought, as these
are shown in the characters and relations of organized beings: unity
of thought, manifesting itself independently of space, of time, of
known material agencies, of special form,--illustrated by repetition
of similar types in different circumstances, by identities, or
partial resemblances, or serial connections, found under varying
conditions of being; power of expressing the same idea in innumerable
forms, as in those instances of essential identity of parts in the
midst of formal differences known as _special homologies_; power of
combination, as in the adjustment of organized beings to each other
and to the inorganic world, or in the harmonious allotment of the
most varied gifts to different beings; definite recognition of time
and space, as in the life of individuals, of species, in the stages
of growth, in the geographical limitation of types; prescience and
omniscience, as shown in the _prophetic_ types of earlier geological
ages; omnipresence, by the adjustment of the whole series of animal
organisms to the various parts of the planet they inhabit.