As it was necessary, in view of his special programme of work, to

penetrate below the surface of the glacier, and reach, if possible,

its point of contact with the valley bottom, Agassiz had caused a

larger boring apparatus than had been used before, to be

transported to the old site on the Aar glacier. The results of

these experiments are incorporated in the "Systeme Glaciaire,"

published in 1846, with twenty-four folio plates and two maps. They

were of the highest interest with reference to the internal

structure and temperature of the ice and the penetrability of its

mass, pervious throughout, as it proved, to air and water. On one

occasion the boring-rod, having been driven to a depth of one

hundred and ten feet, dropped suddenly two feet lower, showing that

it had passed through an open space hidden in the depth of the ice.

The release of air-bubbles at the same time gave evidence that this

glacial cave, so suddenly broken in upon, was not hermetically

sealed to atmospheric influences from without.

Agassiz was not satisfied with the report of his instruments from

these unknown regions. He determined to be lowered into one of the

so-called wells in the glacier, and thus to visit its interior in

person. For this purpose he was obliged to turn aside the stream

which flowed into the well into a new bed which he caused to be dug

for it. This done, he had a strong tripod erected over the opening,

and, seated upon a board firmly attached by ropes, he was then let

down into the well, his friend Escher lying flat on the edge of the

precipice, to direct the descent and listen for any warning cry.

Agassiz especially desired to ascertain how far the laminated or

ribboned structure of the ice (the so-called blue bands) penetrated

the mass of the glacier. This feature of the glacier had been

observed and described by M. Guyot (see page 292), but Mr. Forbes

had called especial attention to it, as in his belief connected

with the internal conditions of the glacier. It was agreed, as

Agassiz bade farewell to his friends on this curious voyage of

discovery, that he should be allowed to descend until he called out

that they were to lift him. He was lowered successfully and without

accident to a depth of eighty feet. There he encountered an

unforeseen difficulty in a wall of ice which divided the well into

two compartments. He tried first the larger one, but finding it

split again into several narrow tunnels, he caused himself to be

raised sufficiently to enter the smaller, and again proceeded on

his downward course without meeting any obstacle. Wholly engrossed

in watching the blue bands, still visible in the glittering walls

of ice, he was only aroused to the presence of approaching danger

by the sudden plunge of his feet into water. His first shout of

distress was misunderstood, and his friends lowered him into the

ice-cold gulf instead of raising him. The second cry was effectual,

and he was drawn up, though not without great difficulty, from a

depth of one hundred and twenty-five feet. The most serious peril

of the ascent was caused by the huge stalactites of ice, between

the points of which he had to steer his way. Any one of them, if

detached by the friction of the rope, might have caused his death.

He afterward said: "Had I known all its dangers, perhaps I should

not have started on such an adventure. Certainly, unless induced by

some powerful scientific motive, I should not advise any one to

follow my example." On this perilous journey he traced the

laminated structure to a depth of eighty feet, and even beyond,

though with less distinctness.

The summer closed with their famous ascent of the Jungfrau. The

party consisted of twelve persons Agassiz, Desor, Forbes, Heath,

and two travelers who had begged to join them,--M. de Chatelier, of

Nantes, and M. de Pury, of Neuchatel, a former pupil of Agassiz.

The other six were guides; four beside their old and tried friends,

Jacob Leuthold and Johann Wahren. They left the hospice of the

Grimsel on the 27th of August, at four o'clock in the morning.

Crossing the Col of the Oberaar they descended to the snowy plateau

which feeds the Viescher glacier. In this grand amphitheatre,

walled in by the peaks of the Viescherhorner, they rested for their

midday meal. In crossing these fields of snow, while walking with

perfect security upon what seemed a solid mass, they observed

certain window-like openings in the snow. Stooping to examine one

of them, they looked into an immense open space, filled with soft

blue light. They were, in fact, walking on a hollow crust, and the

small window was, as they afterward found, opposite a large

crevasse on the other side of this ice-cavern, through which the

light entered, flooding the whole vault and receiving from its icy

walls its exquisite reflected color.* (* The effect is admirably

described by M. Desor in his account of this excursion, "Sejours

dans les Glaciers" page 367.)

Once across the fields of snow and neve, a fatiguing walk of five

hours brought them to the chalets of Meril,* (* Sometimes Moril,

but I have retained the spelling of M. Desor.--E.C.A.) where they

expected to sleep. The night which should have prepared them for

the fatigue of the next day was, however, disturbed by an untoward

accident. The ladder left by Jacob Leuthold when last here with

Hugi in 1832, nine years before, and upon which he depended, had

been taken away by a peasant of Viesch. Two messengers were sent in

the course of the night to the village to demand its restoration.

The first returned unsuccessful; the second was the bearer of such

threats of summary punishment from the whole party that he carried

his point, and appeared at last with the recovered treasure on his

back. They had, in the mean while, lost two hours. They should have

been on their road at three o'clock; it was now five. Jacob warned

them therefore that they must make all speed, and that any one who

felt himself unequal to a forced march should stay behind. No one

responded to his suggestion, and they were presently on the road.

Passing Lake Meril, with its miniature icebergs, they reached the

glacier of the Aletsch and its snow-fields, where the real

difficulties and dangers of the ascent were to begin. In this great

semicircular space, inclosed by the Jungfrau, the Monch, and the

lesser peaks of this mountain group, lies the Aletsch reservoir of

snow or neve. As this spot presented a natural pause between the

laborious ascent already accomplished and the immense declivities

which lay before them yet to be climbed, they named it Le Repos,

and halted there for a short rest. Here they left also every

needless incumbrance, taking only a little bread and wine, in case

of exhaustion, some meteorological instruments, and the inevitable

ladder, axe, and ropes of the Alpine climber. On their left, to the

west of the amphitheatre, a vast passage opened between the

Jungfrau and the Kranzberg, and in this could be distinguished a

series of terraces, one above the other. The story is the usual

one, of more or less steep slopes, where they sank in the softer

snow or cut their steps in the icy surfaces; of open crevasses,

crossed by the ladder, or the more dangerous ones, masked by snow,

over which they trod cautiously, tied together by the rope. But

there was nothing to appall the experienced mountaineer with firm

foot and a steady head, until they reached a height where the

summit of the Jungfrau detached itself in apparently inaccessible

isolation from all beneath or around it. To all but the guides

their farther advance seemed blocked by a chaos of precipices,

either of snow and ice or of rock. Leuthold remained however

quietly confident, telling them he clearly saw the course he meant

to follow. It began by an open gulf of unknown depth, though not

too wide to be spanned by their ladder twenty-three feet in length.

On the other side of this crevasse, and immediately above it, rose

an abrupt wall of icy snow. Up this wall Leuthold and another guide

led the way, cutting steps as they went. When half way up they

lowered the rope, holding one end, while their companions fastened

the other to the ladder, so that it served them as a kind of

hand-rail, by which to follow. At the top they found themselves on

a terrace, beyond which a far more moderate slope led to the Col of

Roththal, overlooking the Aletsch valley on one side, the Roththal

on the other. From this point the ascent was more and more steep

and very slow, as every step had to be cut. Their difficulties were

increased, also, by a mist which gathered around them, and by the

intense cold. Leuthold kept the party near the border of the ridge,

because there the ice yielded more readily to the stroke of the

axe; but it put their steadiness of nerve to the greatest test, by

keeping the precipice constantly in view, except when hidden by the

fog. Indeed, they could drive their alpenstocks through the

overhanging rim of frozen snow, and look sheer down through the

hole thus made to the amphitheatre below. One of the guides left

them, unable longer to endure the sight of these precipices so

close at hand. As they neared their goal they feared lest the mist

might, at the last, deprive them of the culminating moment for

which they had braved such dangers. But suddenly, as if touched by

their perseverance, says M. Desor, the veil of fog lifted, and the

summit of the Jungfrau, in its final solitude, rose before them.

There was still a certain distance to be passed before they

actually reached the base of the extreme peak. Here they paused,

not without a certain hesitation, for though the summit lay but a

few feet above them, they were separated from it by a sharp and

seemingly inaccessible ridge. Even Agassiz, who was not easily

discouraged, said, as he looked up at this highest point of the

fortress they had scaled "We can never reach it." For all answer,

Jacob Leuthold, their intrepid guide, flinging down everything

which could embarrass his movements, stretched his alpenstock over

the ridge as a grappling pole, and, trampling the snow as he went,

so as to flatten his giddy path for those who were to follow, was

in a moment on the top. To so steep an apex does this famous peak

narrow, that but one person can stand on the summit at a time, nor

was even this possible till the snow was beaten down. Returning on

his steps, Leuthold, whose quiet, unflinching audacity of success

was contagious, assisted each one to stand for a few moments where

he had stood. The fog, the effect of which they had so much feared,

now lent something to the beauty of the view from this sublime

foothold. Masses of vapor rolled up from the Roththal on the

southwest, but, instead of advancing to envelop them, paused at a

little distance arrested by some current from the plain. The

temperature being below freezing point, the drops of moisture in

this wall of vapor were congealed into ice-crystals, which

glittered like gold in the sunlight and gave back all the colors of

the rainbow.

When all the party were once more assembled at the base of the

peak, Jacob, whose resources never failed, served to each one a

little wine, and they rested on the snow before beginning their

perilous descent. Of living things they saw only a hawk, poised in

the air above their heads; of plants, a few lichens, where the

surface of the rock was exposed. It was four o'clock in the

afternoon before they started on their downward path, turning their

faces to the icy slope, and feeling for the steps behind them, some

seven hundred in all, which had been cut in ascending. In about an

hour they reached the Col of the Roththal, where the greatest

difficulties of the ascent had begun and the greatest dangers of

the descent were over. So elated were they by the success of the

day, and so regardless of lesser perils after those they had passed

through, that they were now inclined to hurry forward incautiously.

Jacob, prudent when others were rash, as he was bold when others

were intimidated, constantly called them to order with his:

"Hubschle! nur immer hubschle!" ("Gently! always gently!")

At six o'clock they were once more at Le Repos, having retraced

their steps in two hours over a distance which had cost them six in

going. Evening was now falling, but daylight was replaced by

moonlight, and when they reached the glacier its whole surface

shone with a soft silvery lustre, broken here and there by the

gigantic shadow of some neighboring mountain thrown black across

it. At about nine o'clock, just as they had passed that part of the

glacier which was, on account of the frequent crevasses, the most

dangerous, they were cheered by the sound of a distant yodel. It

was the call of a peasant who had been charged to meet them with

provisions, at a certain distance above Lake Meril, in case they

should be overcome by hunger and fatigue. The most acceptable thing

he brought was his great wooden bucket, filled with fresh milk. The

picture of the party, as they stood around him in the moonlight,

dipping eagerly into his bucket, and drinking in turn until they

had exhausted the supply, is so vivid, that one shares their good

spirits and their enjoyment. Thus refreshed, they started on the

last stage of their journey, three leagues of which yet lay before

them, and at half-past eleven arrived at the chalets of Meril,

which they had left at dawn.

On the morrow the party broke up, and Agassiz and Desor,

accompanied by their friend, M. Escher de la Linth, returned to the

Grimsel, and after a day's rest there repaired once more to the

Hotel des Neuchatelois. They remained on the glacier until the 5th

of September, spending these few last days in completing their

measurements, and in planting the lines of stakes across the

glacier, to serve as a means of determining its rate of movement

during the year, and the comparative rapidity of that movement at

certain fixed points. Thus concluded one of the most eventful

seasons Agassiz and his companions had yet passed upon the Alps.*

(* Though quoting his exact language only in certain instances, the

account of this and other Alpine ascensions described above has

been based upon M. E. Desor's "Sejours dans les Glaciers". His very

spirited narratives, added to my own recollections of what I had

heard from Mr. Agassiz himself on the same subject, have given me

my material.--E.C.A.)

CHAPTER 11.

1842-1843: AGE 35-36.

Zoological Work uninterrupted by Glacial Researches.

Various Publications.

"Nomenclator Zoologicus."

"Bibliographia Zoologiae et Geologiae."

Correspondence with English Naturalists.

Correspondence with Humboldt.

Glacial Campaign of 1842.

Correspondence with Prince de Canino concerning Journey to United States.

Fossil Fishes from the Old Red Sandstone.

Glacial Campaign of 1843.

Death of Leuthold, the Guide.

Although his glacier work was now so prominent a feature of

Agassiz's scientific life, his zoological studies, especially his

ichthyological researches, and more especially his work on fossil

fishes, went on with little interruption. His publications upon

Fossil Mollusks,* (* "Etudes Critiques sur les Mollusques Fossiles"

4 numbers quarto with 100 plates.) upon Tertiary Shells,* (*

"Iconographie des Coquilles Tertiaires reputees identiques sur les

vivans" 1 number quarto 14 plates.) upon Living and Fossil

Echinoderms,* (* "Monographie d'Echinodermes vivans et fossiles" 4

numbers quarto with 37 plates.) with many smaller monographs on

special subjects, were undertaken and completed during the most

active period of his glacial investigations. More surprising is it

to find him, while pursuing new lines of investigation with

passionate enthusiasm, engaged at the same time upon works

seemingly so dry and tedious as his "Nomenclator Zoologicus," and

his "Bibliographia Zoologiae et Geologiae."

The former work, a large quarto volume with an Index,* (* The Index

was also published separately as an octavo.) comprised an

enumeration of all the genera of the animal kingdom, with the

etymology of their names, the names of those who had first proposed

them, and the date of their publication. He obtained the

cooperation of other naturalists, submitting each class as far as

possible for revision to the leaders in their respective

departments.

In his letter of presentation to the library of the Neuchatel

Academy, addressed to M. le Baron de Chambrier, President of the

Academic Council, Agassiz thus describes the Nomenclator.

. . ."Have the kindness to accept for the library of the Academy

the fifth number of a work upon the sources of zoological

criticism, the publication of which I have just begun. It is a work

of patience, demanding long and laborious researches. I had

conceived the plan in the first years of my studies, and since then

have never lost sight of it. I venture to believe it will be a

barrier against the Babel of confusion which tends to overwhelm the

domain of zoological synonymy. My book will be called 'Nomenclator

Zoologicus.'". . .

The Bibliographia (4 volumes, octavo) was in some measure a

complement of the Nomenclator, and contained a list of all the

authors named in the latter, with notices of their works. It

appeared somewhat later, and was published by the Ray Society in

England, in 1848, after Agassiz had left Europe for the United

States. The material for this work also had been growing upon his

hands for years. Feeling more and more the importance of such a

register as a guide for students, he appealed to naturalists in all

parts of Europe for information upon the scientific bibliography of

their respective countries, and at last succeeded in cataloguing,

with such completeness as was possible, all known works and all

scattered memoirs on zoology and geology. Unable to publish this

costly but unremunerative material, he was delighted to give it up

to the Ray Society. The first three volumes were edited with

corrections and additions by Mr. H.E. Strickland, who died before

the appearance of the fourth volume, which was finally completed

under the care of his father-in-law, Sir William Jardine.

The ability, so eminently possessed by Agassiz of dealing with a

number of subjects at once, was due to no superficial versatility.

To him his work had but one meaning. It was never disconnected in

his thought, and therefore he turned from his glaciers to his

fossils, and from the fossil to the living world, with the feeling

that he was always dealing with kindred problems, bound together by

the same laws. Nowhere is this better seen than in the records of

the scientific society of Neuchatel, the society he helped to found

in the first months of his professorship, and to which he always

remained strongly attached, being a constant attendant at its

sessions from 1833 to 1846. Here we find him from month to month,

with philosophic breadth of thought, treating of animals in their

widest relations, or describing minute structural details with the

skill of a specialist. He presents organized beings in their

geological succession, in their geographical distribution, in their

embryonic development. He reviews and remodels laws of

classification. Sometimes he illustrates the fossil by the living

world, sometimes he finds the key to present phenomena in the

remote past. He reconstructs the history of the glacial period, and

points to its final chapter in the nearest Alpine valleys,

connecting these facts again with like phenomena in distant parts

of the globe. But however wide his range and however various his

topics, under his touch they are all akin, all coordinate parts of

a whole which he strives to understand in its entirety. A few

extracts from his correspondence will show him in his different

lines of research at this time.

The following letter is from Edward Forbes, one of the earliest

explorers of the deep-sea fauna. Agassiz had asked him for some

help in his work upon echinoderms.

EDWARD FORBES TO LOUIS AGASSIZ.

21 LOTHIAN ST., EDINBURGH, February 13, 1841.

. . .A letter from you was to me one of the greatest of pleasures,

and with great delight (though, I fear, imperfectly) I have

executed the commission you gave me. It should have been done much

sooner had not the storms been so bad in the sea near this that,

until three days ago, I was not able to procure a living sea-urchin

from which to make the drawings required. . .You have made all the

geologists glacier-mad here, and they are turning Great Britain

into an ice-house. Some amusing and very absurd attempts at

opposition to your views have been made by one or two

pseudo-geologists; among others, poor--, who has read a paper at

the Royal Society here, maintaining that all the appearances you

refer to glaciers were caused by blocks of ice which floated this

way in the Deluge! and that the fossils of the pleistocene strata

were mollusks, etc., which, climbing upon the ice-blocks, were

carried to warmer seas against their will!! To my mind, one of the

best proofs of the truth of your views lies in the decidedly arctic

character of the pleistocene fauna, which must be referred to the

glacier time, and by such reference is easily understood. I mean

during the summer to collect data on that point, in order to

present a mass of geological proofs of your theory.

Dr. Traill tells me you are proposing to visit England again during

the coming summer. If you do, I hope we shall meet, when I shall

have many things to show you, which time did not permit when you

were here. I look anxiously for the forth-coming number of your

history of the Echinodermata. . .

FROM SIR RODERICK MURCHISON.

June 13, 1842.

. . .Your letters have given me great pleasure: first, in assuring

me that your zeal in ichthyology is undiminished, and that you are

about to give such striking proofs of it to the British

Association; and next that you still pursue with enthusiasm your

admirable researches upon the glaciers. I should be charmed to put

myself under your guidance for a walk on the glaciers of the Aar,

but I hardly dare promise it yet. . .Even were I to make every

haste, I doubt if it be possible to reach your Swiss meeting in

time. It is just possible that I may find you in your glacial

cantonment after your return, but even this will depend upon

circumstances over which I have no control.

I send this letter to you by my friend, Admiral Sir Charles

Malcolm, who passes through Neuchatel on his way to Geneva.

Accompanying it is a copy of my last discourse, which I request you

to accept and to read all parts of it. You will see that I have

grappled honestly and according to my own faith with your ice, but

have never lost sight of your great merit. My concluding paragraph

will convince you and all your friends that if I am wrong it is not

from any preconceived notions, but only because I judge from what

you will call incomplete evidence. Your "Venez voir!" still sounds

in my ears. . .

Murchison remained for many years an opponent of the glacial theory

in its larger application. In the discourse to which the above

letter makes allusion (Address at the Anniversary Meeting of the

Geological Society of London, 1842.* (* Extract from Report in

volume 33 of the "Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal".)) is this

passage: "Once grant to Agassiz that his deepest valleys of

Switzerland, such as the enormous Lake of Geneva, were formerly

filled with snow and ice, and I see no stopping place. From that

hypothesis you may proceed to fill the Baltic and the northern

seas, cover southern England and half of Germany and Russia with

similar icy sheets, on the surfaces of which all the northern

boulders might have been shot off. So long as the greater number of

the practical geologists of Europe are opposed to the wide

extension of a terrestrial glacial theory, there can be little risk

that such a doctrine should take too deep a hold of the mind. . .

The existence of glaciers in Scotland and England (I mean in the

Alpine sense) is not, at all events, established to the

satisfaction of what I believe to be by far the greater number of

British geologists."

Twenty years later, with rare candor, Murchison wrote to Agassiz as

follows; by its connection, though not by its date, the extract is

in place here: "I send you my last anniversary address, which I

wrote entirely myself; and I beg you to believe that in the part of

it that refers to the glacial period, and to Europe as it was

geographically, I have had the sincerest pleasure in avowing that I

was wrong in opposing as I did your grand and original idea of my

native mountains. Yes! I am now convinced that glaciers did descend

from the mountains to the plains as they do now in Greenland."

During the summer of 1842, at about the same date with Murchison's

letter disclaiming the glacial theory, Agassiz received, on the

other hand, a new evidence, and one which must have given him

especial pleasure, of the favorable impression his views were

making in some quarters in England.

FROM DR. BUCKLAND.

OXFORD, July 22, 1842.

You will, I am sure, rejoice with me at the adhesion of C. Darwin

to the doctrine of ancient glaciers in North Wales, of which I send

you a copy, and which was communicated to me by Dr. Tritten, during

the late meeting at Manchester, in time to be quoted by me versus

Murchison, when he was proclaiming the exclusive agency of floating

icebergs in drifting erratic blocks and making scratched and

polished surfaces. It has raised the glacial theory fifty per cent,

as far as relates to glaciers descending inclined valleys; but

Hopkins and the Cantabrigians are still as obstinate as ever

against allowing the power of expansion to move ice along great

distances on horizontal surfaces. . .

The following is the letter referred to above.

C. DARWIN TO DR. TRITTEN.

Yesterday (and the previous days) I had some most interesting work

in examining the marks left by EXTINCT glaciers. I assure you, an

extinct volcano could hardly leave more evident traces of its

activity and vast powers. I found one with the lateral moraine

quite perfect, which Dr. Buckland did not see. Pray if you have any

communication with Dr. Buckland give him my warmest thanks for

having guided me, through the published abstract of his memoir, to

scenes, and made me understand them, which have given me more

delight than I almost remember to have experienced since I first

saw an extinct crater. The valley about here and the site of the

inn at which I am now writing must once have been covered by at

least 800 or 1,000 feet in thickness of solid ice! Eleven years ago

I spent a whole day in the valley where yesterday everything but

the ice of the glaciers was palpably clear to me, and I then saw

nothing but plain water and bare rock. These glaciers have been

grand agencies. I am the more pleased with what I have seen in

North Wales, as it convinces me that my view of the distribution of

the boulders on the South American plains, as effected by floating

ice, is correct. I am also more convinced that the valleys of Glen

Roy and the neighboring parts of Scotland have been occupied by

arms of the sea, and very likely (for in that point I cannot, of

course, doubt Agassiz and Buckland) by glaciers also.

It continued to be a grief to Agassiz that Humboldt, the oldest of

all his scientific friends, and the one whose opinion he most

reverenced, still remained incredulous. Humboldt's letters show

that Agassiz did not willingly renounce the hope of making him a

convert. Agassiz's own letters to Humboldt are missing from this

time onward. Overwhelmed with occupation, and more at his ease in

his relations with the older scientific men, he had ceased to make

the rough drafts in which his earlier correspondence is recorded.

HUMBOLDT TO AGASSIZ.

BERLIN, March 2, 1842.

. . .When one has been so long separated, even accidentally, from a

friend as I have been from you, my dear Agassiz, it is difficult to

find beginning or end to a letter. The kindly remembrance which you

send me is evidence that my long silence has not seemed strange to

you. . .It would be wasting words to tell you how I have been

prevented, by the distractions of my life, always increasing with

old age, from acknowledging the admirable things received from you,

--upon living and fossil fishes, echinoderms, and glaciers. My

admiration of your boundless activity, of your beautiful

intellectual life, increases with every year. This admiration for

your work and your bold excursions is based upon the most careful

reading of all the views and investigations, for which I have to

thank you. This very week I have read with great satisfaction your

truly philosophical address, and your long treatise in Cotta's

fourth "Jahresschrift." Even L. von Buch confessed that the first

half of your treatise, the living presentation of the succession of

organized beings, was full of truth, sagacity, and novelty.

I in no way reproach you, my dear friend, for the urgent desire

expressed in all your letters, that your oldest friends should

accept your comprehensive geological view of your ice-period. It is

very noble and natural to wish that what has impressed us as true

should also be recognized by those we love. . .I believe I have

read and compared all that has been written for and against the

ice-period, and also upon the transportation of boulders, whether

pushed along or carried by floods or gliding over slopes. My own

opinion, as you know, can have no weight or authority, since I have

not myself seen the most decisive points. Indeed I am, perhaps

wrongly, inclined to look upon all geological theories as having

their being in a mythical region, in which, with the progress of

physics, the phantasms are modified century by century. But the

"elephants caught in the ice," and Cuvier's "instantaneous change

of climate," seem to me no more intelligible today than when I

wrote my Asiatic fragments. According to all that we know of the

decrease of heat in the earth, I cannot understand such a change of

temperature in a space of time which does not also allow for the

decaying of flesh. I understand much better how wolves, hares, and

dogs, should they fall to-day into clefts of the frozen regions of

Northern Siberia (and the so-called "elephant-ice" is in plain

prose only porphyritic drift mixed with ice-crystals, true drift

material), might retain their flesh and muscles. . .But I am only a

grumbling rebellious subject in your kingdom. . .Do not be vexed

with a friend who is more than ever impressed with your services to

geology, your philosophical views of nature, your profound

knowledge of organized beings. . .

With old attachment and the warmest friendship, your

A. DE HUMBOLDT.

In the same strain is this extract from another letter of

Humboldt's, written two or three months later.

. . ."'Grace from on high,' says Madame de Sevigne, 'comes slowly.'

I especially desire it for the glacial period and for that fatal

cap of ice which frightens me, child of the equator that I am. My

heresy, of little importance, since I have seen nothing, does not,

I assure you, my dear Agassiz, diminish my ardent desire that all

your observations should be published. . .I rejoice in the good

news you give me of the fishes. I should pain you did I add that

this work of yours, by the light it has shed on the organic

development of animals, makes the true foundation of your glory.".

. .

LOUIS AGASSIZ TO SIR PHILIP EGERTON.

NEUCHATEL, June, 1842.

. . .I am hard at work on the fishes of the "Old Red," and will

send you at Manchester a part at least of the plates, with a

general summary of the species of that formation. I aim to finish

the work with such care that it shall mark a sensible advance in

ichthyology. I hope it will satisfy you. . .You ask me how I intend

to finish my Fossil Fishes? As follows: As soon as the number on

the species of the "Old Red" is finished, I shall complete the

general outline of the work as I did with volume 4, in order that

the arrangement and character of all the families in the four

orders may be studied in their zoological affinities, with their

genera and principal species. But as this outline can no longer

contain the innumerable species now known to me, I take up

monographically the species from the different geological

formations in the order of the deposits, and publish as many

supplements as there are great formations rich in fossil fishes. I

shall limit myself to the species described in the body of the

work, merely adding the description of the new species in each

deposit, and such additions as I may have to make for those already

known. In this way, those who wish to study fossil fishes from the

zoological stand-point can turn to the work in the original form,

while those who wish to study them in their geological relations

can confine themselves to the supplements. By means of double

registers at the end of each volume, these two distinct parts of

the work will be again united as a complete whole. This is the only

plan I have been able to devise by which I could publish in

succession all my materials without burdening my first subscribers,

who will thus be free to accept the supplements or not, as they

prefer. Should you have occasion to mention this arrangement to the

friends of fossil ichthyology, pray do so; it seems to me for the

interest of the matter that it should be known. . .I propose to

resume with new zeal my researches upon the fossil fishes as soon

as I return from an excursion I wish to make in July and August to

the glacier of the Aar, where I hope, by a last visit this year, to

conclude my labors on this subject. You will be glad to learn that

the beautiful barometer you gave me has been my faithful companion

in the Alps. . .I have the pleasure to tell you that the King of

Prussia has made me a handsome gift of nearly 200 pounds for the

continuance of my glacial work. I feel, therefore, the greater

certainty of completing what remains for me to do. . .

The campaign of 1842 opened on the 4th of July. The boulder had

ceased to be a safe shelter, and was replaced by a rough frame

cabin covered with canvas. If the party had some regrets in leaving

their picturesque hut beneath the rock, the greater comfort of the

new abode consoled them. It had several divisions. A sleeping-place

for the guides and workmen was partitioned off from a middle room

occupied by Agassiz and his friends, while the front space served

as dining-room, sitting-room, and laboratory. This outer apartment

boasted a table and one or two benches; even a couple of chairs

were kept as seats of honor for occasional guests. A shelf against

the wall and a few pegs accommodated books, instruments, coats,

etc., and a plank floor, on which to spread their blankets at

night, was a good exchange for the frozen surface of the glacier.*

(* In bidding farewell to the boulder which had been the first

"Hotel des Neuchatelois" we may add a word of its farther fortunes.

It had begun to split in 1841, and was completely rent asunder in

1844, after which frost and rain completed its dismemberment.

Strange to say, during the last summer (1884) certain fragments of

the mass have been found, inscribed with the names of some of the

party; one of the blocks bearing beside names, the mark "Number 2".

The account says "The middle stone, the one numbered 2, was at the

intersecting point of two lines drawn from the Pavilion Dollfuss to

the Scheuchzerhorn on the one part, and from the Rothhorn to the

Thierberg on the other." According to the measurements taken by

Agassiz, the Hotel des Neuchatelois in 1840 stood at 797 metres

from the promontory of Abschwung. We are thus enabled, by referring

to the large glacier map of Wild and Stengel, to compare the

present with the then position of the stone, and thereby ascertain

the progress of the glacier since the time in question. Thus the

boulder still contributes something toward the sequel of the work

begun by those who once found shelter beneath it.--E.C.A.)

Mr. Wild, an engineer of known ability, was now a member of their

party, as a topographical survey was to be one of the chief objects

of the summer's work. The results of this survey, which was

continued during two summers, are embodied in the map accompanying

Agassiz's "Systeme Glaciaire." Experiments upon the extent and

connection of the net-work of capillary fissures that admitted

water into the interior of the glaciers, occupied Agassiz's own

attention during a great part of the summer. In order to ascertain

this, colored liquids were introduced into the glacier by means of

boring, and it was found that they threaded their way through the

mass of the ice and reappeared at lower points with astonishing

rapidity. A gallery was cut at a depth of ten metres below the

surface, through a wall of ice intervening between two crevasses.

The colored liquid poured into a hole above soon appeared on the

ceiling of the gallery. The experimenters were surprised to find

that at night the same result was obtained, and that the liquid

penetrated from the surface to the roof of the gallery even more

quickly than during the day. This was explained by the fact that

the fissures were then free from any moisture arising from surface

melting, so that the passage through them was unimpeded.* (*

Distrust has been thrown upon these results by the failure of more

recent attempts to repeat the same experiments. In reference to

this, Agassiz himself says "The infiltration has been denied in

consequence of the failure of some experiments in which an attempt

was made to introduce colored fluids into the glacier. To this I

can only answer that I succeeded completely myself in the self-same

experiment which a later investigator found impracticable, and that

I see no reason why the failure of the latter attempt should cast a

doubt upon the success of the former. The explanation of the

difference in the result may perhaps be found in the fact that as a

sponge gorged with water can admit no more fluid than it already

contains, so the glacier, under certain circumstances, and

especially at noonday in summer, may be so soaked with water that

all attempts to pour colored fluids into it would necessarily

fail."--See "Geological Sketches" by L. Agassiz, page 236.)

The comparative rate of advance in the different parts of the

glacier was ascertained this summer with greater precision than

before. The rows of stakes planted in a straight line across the

glacier by Agassiz and Escher de la Linth, in the previous

September, now described a crescent with the curve turned toward

the terminus of the glacier, showing, contrary to the expectation

of Agassiz, that the centre moved faster than the sides. The

correspondence of the curve in the stratification with that of the

line of stakes confirmed this result. The study of the

stratification of the snow was a marked feature of the season's

work, and Agassiz believed, as will be seen by a later letter, that

he had established this fact of glacial structure beyond a doubt.

The origin and mode of formation of the crevasses also especially

occupied the observers. On the 7th of August, Agassiz had an

opportunity of watching this phenomenon in its initiation.

Attracted to a certain spot on the glacier by a commotion among his

workmen, he found them alarmed at the singular noises and movements

in the ice. "I heard," he says, "at a little distance a sound like

the simultaneous discharge of fire-arms; hurrying in the direction

of the noise, it was repeated under my feet with a movement like

that of a slight earthquake; the ground seemed to shift and give

way under me, but now the sound differed from the preceding, and

resembled a crumbling of rocks, without, however, any perceptible

sinking of the surface. The glacier actually trembled,

nevertheless; for a block of granite three feet in diameter,

perched on a pedestal two feet high, suddenly fell down. At the

same instant a crack opened between my feet and ran rapidly across

the glacier in a straight line."* (* Extract from a letter of Louis

Agassiz to M. Arago dated from the Hotel des Neuchatelois, Glacier

of the Aar, August 7, 1842.) On this occasion Agassiz saw three

crevasses formed in an hour and a half, and heard others opening at

a greater distance from him. He counted eight new fissures in a

space of one hundred and twenty-five feet. The phenomenon continued

throughout the evening, and recurred, though with less frequency,

during the night. The cracks were narrow, the largest an inch and a

half in width, and their great depth was proved by the rapidity

with which they drained any standing water in their immediate

vicinity. "A boring-hole," says Agassiz, "one hundred and thirty

feet deep and six inches in diameter, full of water, was completely

emptied in a few minutes, showing that these narrow cracks

penetrated to great depths."

The summer's work included observations also on the comparative

movement of the glacier during the day and night, on the surface

waste of the mass, its reparation, on the neve and snow of the

upper regions, on the meridian holes, the sun-dials of the

glaciers, as they have been called.* (* "Here and there on the

glacier there are patches of loose material, dust, sand, or gravel,

accumulated by diminutive water-rills and small enough to become

heated during the day. They will, of course, be warmed first on

their eastern side, then still more powerfully on their southern

side, and, in the afternoon, with less force again, on their

western side, while the northern side will remain comparatively

cool. Thus around more than half of their circumference they melt

the ice in a semicircle, and the glacier is covered with little

crescent-shaped troughs of this description, with a steep wall on

one side and a shallow one on the other, and a little heap of loose

materials in the bottom. They are the sun-dials of the glacier,

recording the hour by the advance of the sun's rays upon them."--"

Geological Sketches" by L. Agassiz page 293.) On the whole, the

most important result of the campaign was the topographical survey

of the glacier, recorded in the map published in Agassiz's second

work on the glacier.

At about this time there begin to be occasional references in his

correspondence to a journey of exploration in the United States.

Especially was this plan in frequent discussion between him and

Charles Bonaparte, Prince of Canino, a naturalist almost as ardent

as himself, with whom he had long been in intimate scientific

correspondence. In April, 1842, the prince writes him: "I indulge

myself in dreaming of the journey to America in which you have

promised to accompany me. What a relaxation! and at the same time

what an amount of useful work!" Again, a few months later, "You

must keep me well advised of your plans, and I, in my turn, will

try so to arrange my affairs as to find myself free in the spring

of 1844 for a voyage, the chief object of which will be to show my

oldest son the country where he was born, and where man may develop

free of shackles. The mere anticipation of this journey is

delightful to me, since I shall have you at my side, and may thus

feel sure that it will make an epoch in science." This letter is

answered from the glacier; the first part refers to the

Nomenclator, in regard to which he often consulted the prince.

LOUIS AGASSIZ TO THE PRINCE OF CANINO.

GLACIER OF THE AAR, September 1, 1842.

. . .I thank you most sincerely for the pains you have so kindly

taken with my proof, and for pointing out the faults and omissions

you have noticed in my register of birds. I made the corrections at

once, and have taken the liberty of mentioning on the cover of this

number the share you have consented to take in my Nomenclator. I

shall try to do better and better in the successive classes, but

you well know the impossibility of avoiding grave errors in such a

work, and that they can be wholly weeded out only in a second and

third edition. I should have written sooner in answer to your last,

had not your letter reached me on the Glacier of the Aar, where I

have been since the beginning of July, following up observations,

the results of which become every day more important and more

convincing. The most striking fact, one which I think I have placed

beyond the reach of doubt, is the primitive stratification of the

neve, or fields of snow,--stratified from the higher regions across

the whole course of the glacier to its lower extremity. I have

prepared a general map, with transverse sections, showing how the

layers lift themselves on the borders of the glacier and also at

their junction, where two glaciers meet at the outlet of adjoining

valleys; and how, also, the waving lines formed by the layers on

the surface change to sharper concentric curves with a marked axis,

as the glacier descends to lower levels. For a full demonstration

of the matter, I ought to send you my map and plans, of which I

have, as yet, no duplicates; but the fact is incontestable, and you

will oblige me by announcing it in the geological section at Padua.

M. Charpentier, who is going to your meeting, will contest it, but

you can tell him from me that it is as evident as the

stratification of the Neptunic rocks. To see and understand it

fully, however, one must stand well above the glacier, so as to

command the surface as a whole in one view. I would add that I am

not now alluding to the blue and white bands in the ice of which I

spoke to you last year; this is a quite distinct phenomenon.

I wish I could accept your kind invitation, but until I have gone

to the bottom of the glacier question and terminated my "Fossil

Fishes," I do not venture to move. It is no light task to finish

all this before our long journey, to which I look forward, as it

draws nearer, with a constantly increasing interest. I am very

sorry not to join you at Florence. It would have been a great

pleasure for me to visit the collections of northern Italy in your

company. . .I write you on a snowy day, which keeps me a prisoner

in my tent; it is so cold that I can hardly hold my pen, and the

water froze at my bedside last night. The greatest privation is,

however, the lack of fruit and vegetables. Hardly a potato once a

fortnight, but always and every day, morning and night, mutton,

everlasting mutton, and rice soup. As early as the end of July we

were caught for three days by the snow; I fear I shall be forced to

break up our encampment next week without having finished my work.

What a contrast between this life and that of the plain! I am

afraid my letter may be long on the road before reaching the mail,

and I pause here that I may not miss the chance of forwarding it by

a man who has just arrived with provisions and is about to return

to the hospice of the Grimsel, where some trustworthy guide will

undertake to deliver it at the first post-office.

No sooner is Agassiz returned from the glacier than we meet him

again in the domain of his fossil fishes.

LOUIS AGASSIZ TO SIR PHILIP EGERTON.

NEUCHATEL, December 15, 1842.

. . .In the last few months I have made an important step in the

identification of fossil fishes. The happy idea occurred to me of

applying the microscope to the study of fragments of their bones,

especially those of the head, and I have found in their structure

modifications as remarkable and as numerous as those which Mr. Owen

discovered in the structure of teeth. Here there is a vast new

field to explore. I have already applied it to the identification

of the fossil fishes in the Old Red of Russia sent me for that

purpose by Mr. Murchison. You will find more ample details about it

in my report to him. I congratulate myself doubly on the results;

first, because of their great importance in paleontology, and also

because they will draw more closely my relations with Mr. Owen,

whom I always rejoice to meet on the same path with myself, and

whom I believe incapable of jealousy in such matters. . .The only

point indeed, on which I think I may have a little friendly

difference with him, is concerning the genus Labyrinthodon, which I

am firmly resolved, on proofs that seem to me conclusive, to claim

for the class of fishes.* (* On seeing Owen's evidence some years

later, Agassiz at once acknowledged himself mistaken on this point.

) As soon as I have time I will write to Mr. Owen, but this need

not prevent you from speaking to him on the subject if you have an

early opportunity to do so. I am now exclusively occupied with the

fossil fishes, which at any cost I wish to finish this winter. . .

Before even returning to my glacier work, I will finish my

monograph of the Old Red, so that you may present it at the Cork

meeting, which it will be impossible for me to attend. . .I am

infinitely grateful to you and Lord Enniskillen for your

willingness to trust your Sheppy fishes to me; I shall thus be

prepared in advance for a strict determination of these fossils.

Having them for some time before my eyes, I shall become familiar

with all the details. When I know them thoroughly, and have

compared them with the collections of skeletons in the Museums of

Paris, of Leyden, of Berlin, and of Halle, I will then come to

England to see what there may be in other collections which I

cannot have at my disposal here.

The winter of 1843, apart from his duties as professor, was devoted

to the completion of the various zoological works on which he was

engaged, and to the revision of materials he had brought back from

the glacier. His habits with reference to physical exercise were

very irregular. He passed at once from the life of the mountaineer

to that of the closet student. After weeks spent on the snow and

ice of the glacier, constantly on foot and in the open air, he

would shut himself up for a still longer time in his laboratory,

motionless for hours at his microscope by day, and writing far into

the night, rarely leaving his work till long after midnight. He was

also forced at this time to press forward his publications in the

hope that he might have some return for the sums he had expended

upon them. This was indeed a very anxious period of his life. He

could never be brought to believe that purely intellectual aims

were not also financially sound, and his lithographic

establishment, his glacier work, and his costly researches in

zoology had proved far beyond his means. The prophecies of his old

friend Humboldt were coming true. He was entangled in obligations,

and crushed under the weight of his own undertakings. He began to

doubt the possibility of carrying out his plan of a scientific

journey to the United States.

AGASSIZ TO THE PRINCE OF CANINO.

NEUCHATEL, April, 1843.

. . .I have worked like a slave all winter to finish my fossil

fishes; you will presently receive my fifteenth and sixteenth

numbers, forwarded two days since, with more than forty pages of

text, containing many new observations. I shall allow myself no

interruption until this work is finished, hoping thereby to obtain

a little freedom, for if my position here is not changed I shall be

forced to seek the means of existence elsewhere. Meantime,

extravagant projects present themselves, as is apt to be the case

when one is in difficulties. That of accompanying you to the United

States was so tempting, that I am bitterly disappointed to think

that its execution becomes impossible in my present circumstances.

All my projects for further publications must also be adjourned, or

perhaps renounced. . .Possibly, when my work on the fossil fishes

is completed, the sale of some additional copies may help me to

rise again. And yet I have not much hope of this, since all the

attempts of my friends to obtain subscriptions for me in France and

Russia have failed: because the French government takes no interest

in what is done out of Paris; and in Russia such researches, having

little direct utility, are looked upon with indifference. Do you

think any position would be open to me in the United States, where

I might earn enough to enable me to continue the publication of my

unhappy books; which never pay their way because they do not meet

the wants of the world?. . .

In the following July we find him again upon the glacier. But the

campaign of 1843 opened sadly for the glacial party. Arriving at

Meiringen they heard that Jacob Leuthold was ill and would probably

be unable to accompany them. They went to his house, and found him,

indeed, the ghost of his former self, apparently in a rapid

decline. Nevertheless, he welcomed them gladly to his humble home,

and would have kept them for some refreshment. Fearing to fatigue

him, however, they stayed but a few moments. As they left, one of

the party pointed to the mountains, adding a hope that he might

soon join them. His eyes filled with tears; it was his only answer,

and he died three days later. He was but thirty-seven years of age,

and at that time the most intrepid and the most intelligent of the

Oberland guides. His death was felt as a personal grief by the band

of workers whose steps he had for years guided over the most

difficult Alpine passes.

The summer's work continued and completed that of the last season.

On leaving the glacier the year before they had marked a network of

loose boulders, such as travel with the ice, and also a number of

fixed points in the valley walls, comparing and registering their

distance from each other. They had also sunk a line of stakes

across the glacier. The change in the relative position of the two

sets of signals and the curve in their line of stakes gave them,

self-recorded, as it were, the rate of advance of the glacier as a

whole, and also the comparative rate of progression in its

different parts. Great pains was also taken during the summer to

measure the advance in every twenty-four hours, as well as to

compare the diurnal with the nocturnal movement, and to ascertain

the amount of surface waste. The season was an unfavorable one,

beginning so late and continuing so cold that the period of work

was shortened.

CHAPTER 12.

1843-1846: AGE 36-39.

Completion of Fossil Fishes.

Followed by Fossil Fishes of the Old Red Sandstone.

Review of the Later Work.

Identification of Fishes by the Skull.

Renewed Correspondence with Prince Canino about Journey

to the United States.

Change of Plan owing to the Interest of the King of Prussia

in the Expedition.

Correspondence between Professor Sedgwick and Agassiz on

Development Theory.

Final Scientific Work in Neuchatel and Paris.

Publication of "Systeme Glaciaire."

Short Stay in England.

Farewell Letter from Humboldt.

Sails for United States.

In 1843 the "Recherches sur les Poissons Fossiles" was completed,

and fast upon its footsteps, in 1844, followed the author's

"Monograph on the Fossil Fishes of the Old Red Sandstone, or the

Devonian System of Great Britain and Russia," a large quarto volume

of text, accompanied by forty-one plates. Nothing in his

paleontological studies ever interested Agassiz more than this

curious fauna of the Old Red, so strange in its combinations that

even well-informed naturalists had attributed its fossil remains to

various classes of the animal kingdom in turn, and, indeed, long

remained in doubt as to their true nature. Agassiz says himself in

his Preface: "I can never forget the impression produced upon me by

the sight of these creatures, furnished with appendages resembling

wings, yet belonging, as I had satisfied myself, to the class of

fishes. Here was a type entirely new to us, about to reenter (for

the first time since it had ceased to exist) the series of beings;

nor could anything, thus far revealed from extinct creations, have

led us to anticipate its existence. So true is it that observation

alone is a safe guide to the laws of development of organized

beings, and that we must be on our guard against all those systems

of transformation of species so lightly invented by the

imagination."

The author goes on to state that the discovery of these fossils was

mainly due to Hugh Miller, and that his own work had been confined

to the identification of their character and the determination of

their relations to the already known fossil fishes. This work, upon

a type so extraordinary, implied, however, innumerable and

reiterated comparisons, and a minute study of the least fragments

of the remains which could be procured. The materials were chiefly

obtained in Scotland; but Sir Roderick Murchison also contributed

his own collection from the Old Red of Russia, and various other

specimens from the same locality. Not only on account of their

peculiar structure were the fishes of the Old Red interesting to

Agassiz, but also because, with this fauna, the vertebrate type

took its place for the first time in what were then supposed to be

the most ancient fossiliferous beds. When Agassiz first began his

researches on fossil fishes, no vertebrate form had been discovered

below the coal. The occurrence of fishes in the Devonian and

Silurian beds threw the vertebrate type back, as he believed, into

line with all the invertebrate classes, and seemed to him to show

that the four great types of the animal kingdom, Radiates,

Mollusks, Articulates, and Vertebrates, had appeared together.* (*

Introduction to the "Poissons Fossiles de Vieux Gres Rouge" page

22.) "It is henceforth demonstrated," says Agassiz, "that the

fishes were included in the plan of the first organic combinations

which made the point of departure for all the living inhabitants of

our globe in the series of time."

In his opinion this simultaneity of appearance, as well as the

richness and variety displayed by invertebrate classes from the

beginning, made it* (* Introduction to the "Poissons Fossiles du

Vieux Gres Rouge" page 21.) "impossible to refer the first

inhabitants of the earth to a few stocks, subsequently

differentiated under the influence of external conditions of

existence.". . .He adds:* (* Introduction to the "Poissons Fossiles

de Vieux Gres Rouge" page 24.) "I have elsewhere presented my views

upon the development through which the successive creations have

passed during the history of our planet. But what I wish to prove

here, by a careful discussion of the facts reported in the

following pages, is the truth of the law now so clearly

demonstrated in the series of vertebrates, that the successive

creations have undergone phases of development analogous to those

of the embryo in its growth and similar to the gradations shown by

the present creation in the ascending series, which it presents as

a whole. One may consider it as henceforth proved that the embryo

of the fish during its development, the class of fishes as it at

present exists in its numerous families, and the type of fish in

its planetary history, exhibit analogous phases through which one

may follow the same creative thought like a guiding thread in the

study of the connection between organized beings." Following this

comparison closely, he shows how the early embryonic condition of

the present fishes is recalled by the general disposition of the

fins in the fishes of the Old Red Sandstone, and especially by the

caudal fin, making the unevenly lobed tail, so characteristic of

these ancient forms. This so called heterocercal tail is only known

to exist, as a permanent adult feature, in the sturgeons of to-day.

The form of the head and the position of the mouth and eyes in the

fishes of the Old Red were also shown to be analogous with

embryonic phases of our present fishes. From these analogies, and

also from the ascendancy of fishes as the only known vertebrate,

and therefore as the highest type in those ancient deposits,

Agassiz considered this fauna as representing "the embryonic age of

the reign of fishes;" and he sums up his results in conclusion in

the following words: "The facts, taken as a whole, seem to me to

show, not only that the fishes of the Old Red constitute an

independent fauna, distinct from those of other deposits, but that

they also represent in their organization the most remarkable

analogy with the first phases of embryonic development in the bony

fishes of our epoch, and a no less marked parallelism with the

lower degrees of certain types of the class as it now exists on the

surface of the earth."

It has been said by one of the biographers of Agassiz,* (* "Louis

Agassiz: Notice biographique" par Ernest Favre.) in reference to

this work upon the fishes of the Old Red Sandstone: "It is

difficult to understand why the results of these admirable

researches, and of later ones made by him, did not in themselves

lead him to support the theory of transformation, of which they

seem the natural consequence." It is true that except for the

frequent allusion to a creative thought or plan, this introduction

to the Fishes of the Old Red might seem to be written by an

advocate of the development theory rather than by its most

determined opponent, so much does it deal with laws of the organic

world, now used in support of evolution. These comprehensive laws,

announced by Agassiz in his "Poissons Fossiles," and afterward

constantly reiterated by him, have indeed been adopted by the

writers on evolution, though with a wholly different

interpretation. No one saw more clearly than Agassiz the relation

which he first pointed out, between the succession of animals of

the same type in time and the phases of their embryonic growth

to-day, and he often said, in his lectures, "the history of the

individual is the history of the type." But the coincidence between

the geological succession, the embryonic development, the

zoological gradation, and the geographical distribution of animals

in the past and the present, rested, according to his belief, upon

an intellectual coherence and not upon a material connection. So,

also, the variability, as well as the constancy, of organized

beings, at once so plastic and so inflexible, seemed to him

controlled by something more than the mechanism of self-adjusting

forces. In this conviction he remained unshaken all his life,

although the development theory came up for discussion under so

many various aspects during that time. His views are now in the

descending scale; but to give them less than their real prominence

here would be to deprive his scientific career of its true basis.

Belief in a Creator was the keynote of his study of nature.

In summing up the comprehensive results of Agassiz's

paleontological researches, and especially of his "Fossil Fishes,"

Arnold Guyot says:* (* See "Biographical Memoir of Louis Agassiz"

page 28.)--"Whatever be the opinions which many may entertain as to

the interpretation of some of these generalizations, the vast

importance of these results of Agassiz's studies may be appreciated

by the incontestable fact, that nearly all the questions which

modern paleontology has treated are here raised and in great

measure solved. They already form a code of general laws which has

become a foundation for the geological history of the life-system,

and which the subsequent investigations of science have only

modified and extended, not destroyed. Nowhere did the mind of

Agassiz show more power of generalization, more vigor, or more

originality. The discovery of these great truths is truly his work;

he derived them immediately from nature by his own observations.

Hence it is that all his later zoological investigations tend to a

common aim, namely, to give by farther studies, equally

conscientious but more extensive, a broader and more solid basis to

those laws which he had read in nature and which he had proclaimed

at that early date in his immortal work, 'Poissons Fossiles.' Let

us not be astonished that he should have remained faithful to these

views to the end of his life. It is because he had SEEN that he

BELIEVED, and such a faith is not easily shaken by new hypotheses."

LOUIS AGASSIZ TO SIR PHILIP EGERTON.

NEUCHATEL, September 7, 1844.

. . .I write in all haste to ask for any address to which I can

safely forward my report on the Sheppy fishes, so that they may

arrive without fail in time for the meeting at York. Since my last

letter I have made progress in this kind of research. I have

sacrificed all my duplicates of our present fishes to furnish

skeletons. I have prepared more than a hundred since I last wrote

you, and I can now determine the family, and even the genus, simply

by seeing the skull. There remains nothing impossible now in the

determination of fishes, and if I can obtain certain exotic genera,

which I have not as yet, I can make an osteology of fishes as

complete as that which we possess for the other classes of

vertebrates. Every family has its special type of skull. All this

is extremely interesting. I have already corrected a mass of

inaccurate identifications established upon external characters;

and as for fossils, I have recognized and characterized seventeen

new genera among the less perfect undetermined specimens you have

sent me. Several families appear now for the first time among the

fossils. I have been able to determine to what family all the

doubtful genera belong; indeed Sheppy will prove as rich in species

as Mont Bolca. When you see your specimens again you will hardly

recognize them, they are so changed; I have chiseled and cleaned

them, until they are almost like anatomical preparations. Try to

procure as many more specimens as possible and send them to me. I

cannot stir from Neuchatel, now that I am so fully in the spirit of

work, and besides it would be a useless expense. . .You will

receive with my report the three numbers which complete my

monograph of the Fishes of the Old Red. I feel sure, in advance,

that you will be satisfied with them. . .

SIR PHILIP EGERTON TO LOUIS AGASSIZ.

TOLLY HOUSE, ALNESS, ROSS-SHIRE. September 15, 1844.

. . .I have only this day received your letter of the 6th, and I

fear much you will scarcely receive this in time to make it

available. I shall not be able to reach York for the commencement

of the meeting, but hope to be there on Saturday, September 28th. A

parcel will reach me in the shortest possible time addressed Sir P.

Egerton, Donnington Rectory, York. I am delighted with the bright

results of your comparison of the Sheppy fossils with recent forms.

You appear to have opened out an entirely new field of

investigation, likely to be productive of most brilliant results.

Should any accident delay the arrival of your monograph for the

York meeting, I shall make a point of communicating to our

scientific friends the contents of your letter, as I know they will

rejoice to hear of the progress of fossil ichthyology in your

masterly hands. When next you come, I wish you could spend a few

days here. We are surrounded on all sides by the debris of the

moraines of the ancient glaciers that descended the flank of Ben

Wyvis, and I think you would find much to interest you in tracing

their relations. We have also the Cromarty Fish-beds within a few

miles, and many other objects of geological interest. . .I shall

see Lord Enniskillen at York, and will tell him of your success. We

shall, of course, procure all the Sheppy fish we can either by

purchase or exchange. . .

The pressure of work upon his various publications detained Agassiz

at home during the summer of 1844. For the first time he was unable

to make one of the glacial party this year, but the work was

carried on uninterruptedly, and the results reported to him.

Meantime his contemplated journey to the United States flitted

constantly before him.

AGASSIZ TO THE PRINCE OF CANINO.

NEUCHATEL, November 19, 1844.

. . .Your idea of an illustrated American ichthyology is admirable.

But for that we ought to have with us an artist clever enough to

paint fishes rapidly from the life. Work but half done is no longer

permissible in our days. . .In this matter I think there is a

justice due to Rafinesque. However poor his descriptions, he

nevertheless first recognized the necessity of multiplying genera

in ichthyology, and that at a time when the thing was far more

difficult than now. Several of his genera have even the priority

over those now accepted, and I think in the United States it would

be easier than elsewhere to find again a part of the materials on

which he worked. We must not neglect from this time forth to ask

Americans to put us in the way of extending this work throughout

North America. If you accept me for your collaborator, I will at

once do all that I can on my side to bring together notes and

specimens. I will write to several naturalists in the United

States, and tell them that as I am to accompany you on your voyage

I should be glad to know in advance what they have done in

ichthyology, so that we may be the better prepared to profit by our

short sojourn in their country. However, I will do nothing before

having your directions, which, for the sake of the matter in hand,

I should be glad to receive as early as possible. . .

The next letter announces a new aspect of the projected journey. In

explanation, it should be said that finding Agassiz might be

prevented by his poverty from going, the prince had invited him to

be his guest for a summer in the United States.

AGASSIZ TO THE PRINCE OF CANINO.

NEUCHATEL, January 7, 1845.

. . .I have received an excellent piece of news from Humboldt,

which I hasten to share with you. I venture to believe that it will

please you also. . .I had written to Humboldt of our plans, and of

your kind offer to take me with you to the United States, telling

him at the same time how much I regretted that I should be unable

to visit the regions which attracted me the most from a geological

point of view, and asking him if it would be possible to interest

the king in this journey and obtain means from his majesty for a

longer stay on the other side of the Atlantic. I have just received

a delightful and most unexpected reply. The king will grant me 15,

000 francs for this object, so that I shall, in any event, be able

to make the journey. All the more do I desire to make it in your

society, and I think by combining our forces we shall obtain more

important results; but I am glad that I can do it without being a

burden to you. Before answering Humboldt, I am anxious to know

whether your plans are definitely decided upon for this summer, and

whether this arrangement suits you. . .

The pleasant plan so long meditated was not to be fulfilled. The

prince was obliged to defer the journey and never accomplished it.

This was a great disappointment to Agassiz.

"Am I then to go without you," he writes; "is this irrevocable? If

I were to defer my departure till September would it then be

possible for you to leave Rome? It would be too delightful if we

could make this journey together. I wish also, before starting, to

review everything that has been done of late in paleontology,

zoology, and comparative anatomy, that I may, in behalf of all

these sciences, take advantage of the circumstances in which I

shall be placed. . .Whatever befalls me, I feel that I shall never

cease to consecrate my whole energy to the study of nature; its all

powerful charm has taken such possession of me that I shall always

sacrifice everything to it; even the things which men usually value

most."

Agassiz had determined, before starting on his journey, to complete

all his unfinished works, and to put in order his correspondence

and collections, including the vast amount of specimens sent him

for identification or for his own researches. The task of "setting

his house in order" for a change which, perhaps, he dimly felt to

be more momentous than it seemed, proved long and laborious. From

all accounts, he performed prodigies of work, but the winter and

spring passed, and the summer of 1845 found him still at his post.

Humboldt writes him not without anxiety lest his determination to

complete all the tasks he had undertaken, including the

Nomenclator, should involve him in endless delays and perplexities.

HUMBOLDT TO AGASSIZ.

BERLIN, September 16, 1845.

. . .Your Nomenclator frightens me with its double entries. The

Milky Way must have crossed your path, for you seem to be dealing

with nebulae which you are trying to resolve into stars. For pity's

sake husband your strength. You treat this journey as if it were

for life. As to finishing,--alas! my friend, one does not finish.

Considering all that you have in your well-furnished brain beside

your accumulated papers, half the contents of which you do not

yourself know, your expression "aufraumen,"--to put in final order,

is singularly inappropriate. There will always remain some

burdensome residue,--last things not yet accounted for. I beg you,

then, not to abuse your strength. Be content to finish only what

seems to you nearest completion,--the most advanced of your work.

Your letter reached me, unaccompanied, however, by the books it

announces. They are to come, no doubt, in some other way. Spite of

the demands made upon me by the continuation of my "Cosmos," I

shall find time to read and profit by your introduction to the Old

Red. I am inclined to sing hymns of praise to the Hyperboreans who

have helped you in this admirable work. What you say of the

specific difference in vertical line and of the increased number of

biological epochs is full of interest and wisdom. No wonder you

rebel against the idea that the Baltic contains microscopic animals

identical with those of the chalk! I foresee, however, a new battle

of Waterloo between you and my friend Ehrenberg, who accompanied me

lately, just after the Victoria festivals, to the volcanoes of the

Eifel with Dechen. Not an inch of ground without infusoria in those

regions! For Heaven's sake do not meddle with the infusoria before

you have seen the Canada Lakes and completed your journey. Defer

them till some more tranquil period of your life. . .I must close

my letter with the hope that you will never doubt my warm

affection. Assuredly I shall find no fault with any course of

lectures you may give in the new world, nor do I see the least

objection to giving them for money. You can thus propagate your

favorite views and spread useful knowledge, while at the same time

you will, by most honorable and praiseworthy means, provide

additional funds for your traveling expenses. . .

The following correspondence with Professor Adam Sedgwick is of

interest, as showing his attitude and that of Agassiz toward

questions which have since acquired a still greater scientific

importance.

PROFESSOR ADAM SEDGWICK TO LOUIS AGASSIZ.

TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE, April 10, 1845.

MY DEAR PROFESSOR,

The British Association is to meet here about the middle of June,

and I trust that the occasion will again bring you to England and

give me the great happiness of entertaining you in Trinity College.

Indeed, I wish very much to see you; for many years have now

elapsed since I last had that pleasure. May God long preserve your

life, which has been spent in promoting the great ends of truth and

knowledge! Your great work on fossil fishes is now before me, and I

also possess the first number of your monograph upon the fishes of

the Old Red Sandstone. I trust the new numbers will follow the

first in rapid succession. I love now and then to find a

resting-place; and your works always give me one. The opinions of

Geoffroy St. Hilaire and his dark school seem to be gaining some

ground in England. I detest them, because I think them untrue. They

shut out all argument from DESIGN and all notion of a Creative

Providence, and in so doing they appear to me to deprive physiology

of its life and strength, and language of its beauty and meaning. I

am as much offended in taste by the turgid mystical bombast of

Geoffroy as I am disgusted by his cold and irrational materialism.

When men of his school talk of the elective affinity of organic

types, I hear a jargon I cannot comprehend, and I turn from it in

disgust; and when they talk of spontaneous generation and

transmutation of species, they seem to me to try nature by an

hypothesis, and not to try their hypothesis by nature. Where are

their facts on which to form an inductive truth? I deny their

starting condition. "Oh! but" they reply, "we have progressive

development in geology." Now, I allow (as all geologists must do) a

KIND OF PROGRESSIVE DEVELOPMENT. For example, the first fish are

below the reptiles; and the first reptiles older than man. I say,

we have successive forms of animal life adapted to successive

conditions (so far, proving design), and not derived in natural

succession in the ordinary way of generation. But if no single fact

in actual nature allows us to suppose that the new species and

orders were produced successively in the natural way, how did they

begin? I reply, by a way out of and above common known, material

nature, and this way I call CREATION. Generation and creation are

two distinct ideas, and must be described by two distinct words,

unless we wish to introduce utter confusion of thought and

language. In this view I think you agree with me; for I spoke to

you on the subject when we met (alas, TEN years since!) at Dublin.

Would you have the great kindness to give me your most valuable

opinion on one or two points?

(1.) Is it possible, according to the known laws of actual nature,

or is it probable, on any analogies of nature, that the vast series

of fish, from those of the Ludlow rock and the Old Red Sandstone to

those of our actual seas, lakes, and rivers, are derived from one

common original low type, in the way of development and by

propagation or natural breeding? I should say, NO. But my knowledge

is feeble and at second-hand. Yours is strong and from the

fountain-head.

(2.) Is the organic type of fish higher now than it was during the

carboniferous period, when the Sauroids so much abounded? If the

progressive theory of Geoffroy be true, in his sense, each class of

animals ought to be progressive in its organic type. It appears to

me that this is not true. Pray tell me your own views on this

point.

(3.) There are "ODD FISH" (as we say in jest) in the Old Red

Sandstone. Do these so graduate into crustaceans as to form

anything like such an organic link that one could, by generation,

come naturally from the other? I should say, NO, being instructed

by your labors. Again, allowing this, for the sake of argument, are

there not much higher types of fish which are contemporaneous with

the lower types (if, indeed, they be lower), and do not these

nobler fish of the Old Red Sandstone stultify the hypothesis of

natural generative development?

(4.) Will you give me, in a few general words, your views of the

scale occupied by the fish of the Old Red, considered as a natural

group? Are they so rudimentary as to look like abortions or

creatures derived from some inferior class, which have not yet by

development reached the higher type of fish? Again, I should say,

NO; but I long for an answer from a great authority like yours. I

am most anxious for a good general conception of the fish of the

Old Red, with reference to some intelligible scale.

(5.) Lastly, is there the shadow of ground for supposing that by

any natural generative development the Ichthyosaurians and other

kindred forms of reptile have come from Sauroid, or any other type

of fish? I believe you will say, NO. At any rate, the facts of

geology lend no support to such a view, for the nobler forms of

Reptile appear in strata below those in which the Ichthyosaurians,

etc., are first seen. But I must not trouble you with more

questions. Professor Whewell is now Master of Trinity College. We

shall all rejoice to see you.

Ever, my dear Professor, your most faithful and most grateful

friend,

A. SEDGWICK.

FROM LOUIS AGASSIZ TO A. SEDGWICK.

NEUCHATEL, June, 1845.

. . .I reproach myself for not acknowledging at once your most

interesting letter of April 10th. But you will easily understand

that in the midst of the rush of work consequent upon my

preparation for a journey of several years' duration I have not

noticed the flight of time since I received it, until to-day, when

the sight of the date fills me with confusion. And yet, for years,

I have not received a letter which has given me greater pleasure or

moved me more deeply. I have felt in it and have received from it

that vigor of conviction which gives to all you say or write a

virile energy, captivating alike to the listener or the reader.

Like you, I am pained by the progress of certain tendencies in the

domain of the natural sciences; it is not only the arid character

of this philosophy of nature (and by this I mean, not NATURAL

PHILOSOPHY, but the "Natur-philosophie" of the Germans and French)

which alarms me. I dread quite as much the exaggeration of

religious fanaticism, borrowing fragments from science, imperfectly

or not at all understood, and then making use of them to prescribe

to scientific men what they are allowed to see or to find in

Nature. Between these two extremes it is difficult to follow a safe

road. The reason is, perhaps, that the domain of facts has not yet

received a sufficiently general recognition, while traditional

beliefs still have too much influence upon the study of the

sciences.

Wishing to review such ideas as I had formed upon these questions,

I gave a public course this winter upon the plan of creation as

shown in the development of the animal kingdom. I wish I could send

it to you, for I think it might please you. Unhappily, I had no

time to write it out, and have not even an outline of it. But I

intend to work further upon this subject and make a book upon it

one of these days. If I speak of it to-day it is because in this

course I have treated all the questions upon which you ask my

opinion. Let me answer them here after a somewhat aphoristic

fashion.

I find it impossible to attribute the biological phenomena, which

have been and still are going on upon the surface of our globe, to

the simple action of physical forces. I believe they are due, in

their entirety, as well as individually, to the direct intervention

of a creative power, acting freely and in an autonomic way. . .I

have tried to make this intentional plan in the organization of the

animal kingdom evident, by showing that the differences between

animals do not constitute a material chain, analogous to a series

of physical phenomena, bound together by the same law, but present

themselves rather as the phases of a thought, formulated according

to a definite aim. I think we know enough of comparative anatomy to

abandon forever the idea of the transformation of the organs of one

type into those of another. The metamorphoses of certain animals,

and especially of insects, so often cited in support of this idea,

prove, by the fixity with which they repeat themselves in

innumerable species, exactly the contrary. In the persistency of

these metamorphoses, distinct for each species and known to repeat

themselves annually in a hundred thousand species, and to have done

so ever since the present order of things was established on the

earth, have we not the most direct proof that the diversity of

types is not due to external natural influences? I have followed

this idea in all the types of the animal kingdom. I have also tried

to show the direct intervention of a creative power in the

geographical distribution of organized beings on the surface of the

globe when the species are definitely circumscribed. As evidence of

the fixity of generic types and the existence of a higher and free

causal power, I have made use of a method which appears to me new

as a process of reasoning. The series of reptiles, for instance, in

the family of lizards, shows apodal forms, forms with rudimentary

feet, then with a successively larger number of fingers until we

reach, by seemingly insensible gradations, the genera Anguis,

Ophisaurus, and Pseudopus, the Chamosauria, Chirotes, Bipes, Sepo,

Scincus, and at last the true lizards. It would seem to any

reasonable man that these types are the transformations of a single

primitive type, so closely do the modifications approach each

other; and yet I now reject any such supposition, and after having

studied the facts most thoroughly, I find in them a direct proof of

the creation of all these species. It must not be forgotten that

the genus Anguis belongs to Europe, the Ophisaurus to North

America, the Pseudopus to Dalmatia and the Caspian steppe, the Sepo

to Italy, etc. Now, I ask how portions of the earth so absolutely

distinct could have combined to form a continuous zoological

series, now so strikingly distributed, and whether the idea of this

development could have started from any other source than a

creative purpose manifested in space? These same purposes, this

same constancy in the employment of means toward a final end, may

be read still more clearly in the study of the fossils of the

different creations. The species of all the creations are

materially and genealogically as distinct from each other as those

of the different points on the surface of the globe. I have

compared hundreds of species reputed identical in various

successive deposits,--species which are always quoted in favor of a

transition, however indirect, from one group of species to another,

--and I have always found marked specific differences between them.

In a few weeks I will send you a paper which I have just printed on

this subject, where it seems to me this view is very satisfactorily

proved. The idea of a procreation of new species by preceding ones

is a gratuitous supposition opposed to all sound physiological

notions. And yet it is true that, taken as a whole, there is a

gradation in the organized beings of successive geological

formations, and that the end and aim of this development is the

appearance of man. But this serial connection of all successive

creatures is not material; taken singly these groups of species

show no relation through intermediate forms genetically derived one

from the other. The connection between them becomes evident only

when they are considered as a whole emanating from a creative

power, the author of them all. To your special questions I may now

very briefly reply.

Have fishes descended from a primitive type? So far am I from

thinking this possible, that I do not believe there is a single

specimen of fossil or living fish, whether marine or fresh-water,

that has not been created with reference to a special intention and

a definite aim, even though we may be able to detect but a portion

of these numerous relations and of the essential purpose.

Are the present fishes superior to the older ones? As a general

proposition, I would say, NO; it seems to me even that the fishes

which preceded the appearance of reptiles in the plan of creation

were higher in certain characters than those which succeeded them;

and it is a strange fact that these ancient fishes have something

analogous with reptiles, which had not then made their appearance.

One would say that they already existed in the creative thought,

and that their coming, not far removed, was actually anticipated.

Can the fishes of the Old Red be considered the embryos of those of

later epochs? Of course they are the first types of the vertebrate

series, including the most ancient of the Silurian system; but they

each constitute an independent fauna, as numerous in the places

where these earlier fishes are found, as the present fishes in any

area of similar extent on our sea-shore to-day. I now know one

hundred and four species of fossil fish from the Old Red, belonging

to forty-four genera, comprised under seven families, between

several of which there is but little analogy as to organization. It

is therefore impossible to look upon them as coming from one

primitive stock. The primitive diversity of these types is quite as

remarkable as that of those belonging to later epochs. It is

nevertheless true that, regarded as part of the general plan of

creation, this fauna presents itself as an inferior type of the

vertebrate series, connecting itself directly in the creative

thought with the realization of later forms, the last of which (and

this seems to me to have been the general end of creation) was to

place man at the head of organized beings as the key-stone and term

of the whole series, the final point in the premeditated intention

of the primitive plan which has been carried out progressively in

the course of time. I would even say that I believe the creation of

man has closed creation on this earth, and I draw this conclusion

from the fact that the human genus is the first cosmopolite type in

Nature. One may even affirm that man is clearly announced in the

phases of organic development of the animal kingdom as the final

term of this series.

Lastly: Is there any reason to believe that the Ichthyosaurians are

descendants of the Sauroid fishes which preceded the appearance of

these reptiles? Not the least. I should consider any naturalist who

would seriously present the question in this light as incapable of

discussing it or judging it. He would place himself outside of the

facts and would reason from a basis of his own creating. . .

In the "Revue Suisse" of April, 1845, there is a notice of the

course of lectures to which reference is made in the above letter.

"A numerous audience assembled on the 26th of March for the opening

of a course by Professor Agassiz on the 'Plan of Creation.' It is

with an ever new pleasure that our public come together to listen

to this savant, still so young and already so celebrated. Not

content with pursuing in seclusion his laborious scientific

investigations, he makes a habit of communicating, almost annually,

to an audience less restricted than that of the Academy the general

result of some of his researches. All the qualities to which Mr.

Agassiz has accustomed his listeners were found in the opening

prelude; the fullness and freedom of expression which give to his

lectures the character of a scientific causerie; the dignified ease

of bearing, joined with the simplicity and candor of a savant who

teaches neither by aphorisms nor oracles, but who frankly admits

the public to the results of his researches; the power of

generalization always based upon a patient study of facts, which he

knows how to present with remarkable clearness in a language that

all can understand. We will not follow the professor in tracing the

outlines of his course. Suffice it to say that he intends to show

in the general development of the animal kingdom the existence of a

definite preconceived plan, successively carried out; in other

words, the manifestation of a higher thought,--the thought of God.

This creative thought may be studied under three points of view: as

shown in the relations which, spite of their manifold diversity,

connect all the species now living on the surface of the globe; in

their geographical distribution; and in the succession of beings

from primitive epochs until the present condition of things."

The summer of 1845 was the last which Agassiz passed at home. It

was broken by a short and hurried visit to the glacier of the Aar,

respecting which no details have been preserved. He did not then

know that he was taking a final leave of his cabin among the rocks

and ice. Affairs connected with the welfare of the institution in

Neuchatel, with which he had been so long connected, still detained

him for a part of the winter, and he did not leave for Paris until

the first week in March, 1846. His wife and daughters had already

preceded him to Germany, where he was to join them again on his way

to Paris, and where they were to pass the period of his absence,

under the care of his brother-in-law, Mr. Alexander Braun, then

living at Carlsruhe. His son was to remain at school at Neuchatel.

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.

This task concluded, he went to England, where he was to spend the

few remaining days previous to his departure. Among the last words

of farewell which reached him just as he was leaving the Old World,

little thinking then that he was to make a permanent home in

America, were these lines from Humboldt, written at Sans Souci: "Be

happy in this new undertaking, and preserve for me the first place

under the head of friendship in your heart. When you return I shall

be here no more, but the king and queen will receive you on this

'historic hill' with the affection which, for so many reasons, you

merit. . ."

"Your illegible but much attached friend,

"A. HUMBOLDT."

So closed this period of Agassiz's life. The next was to open in

new scenes, under wholly different conditions. He sailed for

America in September, 1846.

PART 2.

IN AMERICA.

CHAPTER 13.

1846: AGE 39.

Arrival at Boston.

Previous Correspondence with Charles Lyell and Mr. John A. Lowell

concerning Lectures at the Lowell Institute.

Relations with Mr. Lowell.

First Course of Lectures.

Character of Audience.

Home Letter giving an Account of his first Journey

in the United States.

Impressions of Scientific Men, Scientific Institutions

and Collections.

AGASSIZ arrived in Boston during the first week of October, 1846.

He had not come to America without some prospect of employment

beside that comprised in his immediate scientific aims. In 1845,

when his plans for a journey in the United States began to take

definite shape, he had written to ask Lyell whether,

notwithstanding his imperfect English, he might not have some

chance as a public lecturer, hoping to make in that way additional

provision for his scientific expenses beyond the allowance he was

to receive from the King of Prussia. Lyell's answer, written by his

wife, was very encouraging.

LONDON, February 28, 1845.

. . .My husband thinks your plan of lecturing a very good one, and

sure to succeed, for the Americans are fond of that kind of

instruction. We remember your English was pleasant, and if you have

been practicing since, you have probably gained facility in

expression, and a little foreign accent would be no drawback. You

might give your lectures in several cities, but he would like very

much if you could give a course at the Lowell Institute at Boston,

an establishment which pays very highly. . .In six weeks you might

earn enough to pay for a twelve months' tour, besides passing an

agreeable time at Boston, where there are several eminent

naturalists. . .As my husband is writing to Mr. Lowell to-morrow

upon other matters, he will ask him whether there is any course still

open, for he feels sure in that case they would be glad to have

you. . .Mr. Lowell is sole trustee of the Institute, and can nominate

whom he pleases. It was very richly endowed for the purpose of

lectures by a merchant of Boston, who died a few years ago. You

will get nothing like the same remuneration anywhere else. . .

Lyell and Mr. Lowell soon arranged all preliminaries, and it was

understood that Agassiz should begin his tour in the United States

by a course of lectures in Boston before the Lowell Institute. A

month or two before sailing he writes as follows to Mr. Lowell.

PARIS, July 6, 1846.

. . .Time is pressing, summer is running away, and I feel it a duty

to write to you about the contemplated lectures, that you may not

be uncertain about them. So far as the subject is concerned, I am

quite ready; all the necessary illustrations are also completed,

and if I am not mistaken they must by this time be in your hands

. . .I understand from Mr. Lyell that you wish me to lecture in

October. For this also I am quite prepared, as I shall, immediately

after my arrival in Boston, devote all my time to the consideration

of my course. If a later date should suit your plans better, I have

no objection to conform to any of your arrangements, as I shall at

all events pass the whole winter on the shores of the Atlantic, and

be everywhere in reach of Boston in a very short time. . .With your

approbation, I would give to my course the title of "Lectures on

the Plan of the Creation, especially in the Animal Kingdom."

Thus was Agassiz introduced to the institution under whose auspices

he first made acquaintance with his American audiences. There he

became a familiar presence during more than a quarter of a century.

The enthusiastic greeting accorded to him, as a stranger whose

reputation had preceded him, ripened with years into an

affectionate welcome from friends and fellow-citizens, whenever he

appeared on the platform. In the director of the institution, Mr.

John A. Lowell, he found a friend upon whose sympathy and wise

counsels he relied in all his after years. The cordial reception he

met from him and his large family circle made him at once at home

in a strange land.

Never was Agassiz's power as a teacher, or the charm of his

personal presence more evident than in his first course of Lowell

Lectures. He was unfamiliar with the language, to the easy use of

which his two or three visits in England, where most of his

associates understood and spoke French, had by no means accustomed

him. He would often have been painfully embarrassed but for his own

simplicity of character. Thinking only of his subject and never of

himself, when a critical pause came, he patiently waited for the

missing word, and rarely failed to find a phrase which was

expressive if not technically correct. He often said afterward that

his sole preparation for these lectures consisted in shutting

himself up for hours and marshaling his vocabulary, passing in

review, that is, all the English words he could recall. As the

Lyells had prophesied, his foreign accent rather added a charm to

his address, and the pauses in which he seemed to ask the

forbearance of the audience, while he sought to translate his

thought for them, enlisted their sympathy. Their courtesy never

failed him. His skill in drawing with chalk on the blackboard was

also a great help both to him and to them. When his English was at

fault he could nevertheless explain his meaning by illustrations so

graphic that the spoken word was hardly missed. He said of himself

that he was no artist, and that his drawing was accurate simply

because the object existed in his mind so clearly. However this may

be, it was always pleasant to watch the effect of his drawings on

the audience. When showing, for instance, the correspondence of the

articulate type, as a whole, with the metamorphoses of the higher

insects, he would lead his listeners along the successive phases of

insect development, talking as he drew and drawing as he talked,

till suddenly the winged creature stood declared upon the

blackboard, almost as if it had burst then and there from the

chrysalis, and the growing interest of his hearers culminated in a

burst of delighted applause.

After the first lecture in Boston there was no doubt of his

success. He carried his audience captive. His treatment of the

animal kingdom on the broad basis of the comparative method, in

which the great types were shown in their relation to each other

and to the physical history of the world, was new to his hearers.

Agassiz had also the rare gift of divesting his subject of

technicalities and superfluous details. His special facts never

obscured the comprehensive outline, which they were intended to

fill in and illustrate.

This simplicity of form and language was especially adapted to the

audience he had now to address, little instructed in the facts or

the nomenclature of science, though characterized by an eager

curiosity. A word respecting the quality of the Lowell Institute

audience of those days, as new to the European professor as he to

them, is in place here. The institution was intended by its founder

to fertilize the general mind rather than to instruct the selected

few. It was liberally endowed, the entrance was free, and the

tickets were drawn by lot. Consequently the working men and women

had as good an opportunity for places as their employers. As the

remuneration, however, was generous, and the privilege of lecturing

there was coveted by literary and scientific men of the first

eminence, the instruction was of a high order, and the tickets, not

to be had for money, were as much in demand with the more

cultivated and even with the fashionable people of the community as

with their poorer neighbors. This audience, composed of strongly

contrasted elements and based upon purely democratic principles,

had, from the first, a marked attraction for Agassiz. A teacher in

the widest sense, he sought and found his pupils in every class.

But in America for the first time did he come into contact with the

general mass of the people on this common ground, and it influenced

strongly his final resolve to remain in this country. Indeed, the

secret of his greatest power was to be found in the sympathetic,

human side of his character. Out of his broad humanity grew the

genial personal influence, by which he awakened the enthusiasm of

his audiences for unwonted themes, inspired his students to

disinterested services like his own, delighted children in the

school-room, and won the cordial interest as well as the

cooperation in the higher aims of science, of all classes whether

rich or poor.

His first course was to be given in December. Having, therefore, a

few weeks to spare, he made a short journey, stopping at New Haven

to see the elder Silliman, with whom he had long been in

correspondence. Shortly before leaving Europe he had written him,

"I can hardly tell you with what pleasure I look forward to seeing

you, and making the personal acquaintance of the distinguished

savans of your country, whose works I have lately been studying

with especial care. There is something captivating in the

prodigious activity of the Americans, and the thought of contact

with the superior men of your young and glorious republic renews my

own youth." Some account of this journey, including his first

impressions of the scientific men as well as the scientific

societies and collections of the United States, is given in the

following letter. It is addressed to his mother, and with her to a

social club of intimate friends and neighbors in Neuchatel, at

whose meetings he had been for years an honored guest.

BOSTON, December, 1846.

. . .Having no time to write out a complete account of my journey

of last month, I will only transcribe for you some fugitive notes

scribbled along the road in stages or railroad carriages. They bear

the stamp of hurry and constant interruption.

Leaving Boston the 16th of October, I went by railroad to New

Haven, passing through Springfield. The rapidity of the locomotion

is frightful to those who are unused to it, but you adapt yourself

to the speed, and soon become, like all the rest of the world,

impatient of the slightest delay. I well understand that an

antipathy for this mode of travel is possible. There is something

infernal in the irresistible power of steam, carrying such heavy

masses along with the swiftness of lightning. The habits growing

out of continued contact with railroads, and the influence they

exert on a portion of the community, are far from agreeable until

one is familiar with them. You would cry out in dismay did you see

your baggage flung about pell-mell like logs of wood, trunks,

chests, traveling-bags, hat-boxes, all in the same mill, and if

here and there something goes to pieces no one is astonished; never

mind! we go fast,--we gain time,--that is the essential thing.

The manners of the country differ so greatly from ours that it

seems to me impossible to form a just estimate regarding them, or,

indeed, to pronounce judgment at all upon a population so active

and mobile as that of the Northern States of the Union, without

having lived among them for a long time. I do not therefore attempt

any such estimate. I can only say that the educated Americans are

very accessible and very pleasant. They are obliging to the utmost

degree; indeed, their cordiality toward strangers exceeds any that

I have met elsewhere. I might even add that if I could complain of

anything it would be of an excess, rather than a lack, of

attention. I have often found it difficult to make it understood

that the hotel, where I can work at my ease, suits me better than

the proffered hospitality. . .

But what a country is this! all along the road between Boston and

Springfield are ancient moraines and polished rocks. No one who had

seen them upon the track of our present glaciers could hesitate as

to the real agency by which all these erratic masses, literally

covering the country, have been transported. I have had the

pleasure of converting already several of the most distinguished

American geologists to my way of thinking; among others, Professor

Rogers, who will deliver a public lecture upon the subject next

Tuesday before a large audience.

A characteristic feature of American life is to be found in the

frequent public meetings where addresses are delivered. Shortly

after my arrival in Boston I was present at a meeting of some three

thousand workmen, foremen of workshops, clerks, and the like. No

meeting could have been more respectable and well-conducted. All

were neatly dressed; even the simplest laborer had a clean shirt.

It was a strange sight to see such an assemblage, brought together

for the purpose of forming a library, and listening attentively in

perfect quiet for two hours to an address on the advantages of

education, of reading, and the means of employing usefully the

leisure moments of a workman's life. The most eminent men vie with

each other in instructing and forming the education of the

population at large. I have not yet seen a man out of employment or

a beggar, except in New York, which is a sink for the emptyings of

Europe. Yet do not think that I forget the advantages of our old

civilization. Far from it. I feel more than ever the value of a

past which belongs to you and in which you have grown up.

Generations must pass before America will have the collections of

art and science which adorn our cities, or the establishments for

public instruction, sanctuaries as it were, consecrated by the

devotion of those who give themselves wholly to study. Here all the

world works to gain a livelihood or to make a fortune. Few

establishments (of learning) are old enough, or have taken

sufficiently deep root in the habits of the people, to be safe from

innovation; very few institutions offer a combination of studies

such as, in its ensemble, meets the demands of modern civilization.

All is done by the single efforts of individuals or of

corporations, too often guided by the needs of the moment. Thus

American science lacks the scope which is characteristic of higher

instruction in our old Europe. Objects of art are curiosities but

little appreciated and usually still less understood. On the other

hand, the whole population shares in the advanced education

provided for all. . .From Springfield the railroad follows the

course of the Connecticut as far as Hartford, turning then directly

toward the sea-coast. The valley strikingly resembles that of the

Rhine between Carlsruhe and Heidelberg. The same rock, the same

aspect of country, and gres bigarre* (* Trias.) everywhere. The

forest reminds one of Odenwald and of Baden-Baden. Nearer the coast

are cones of basalt like those of Brissac and the Kaiserstuhl. The

erratic phenomena are also very marked in this region; polished

rocks everywhere, magnificent furrows on the sandstone and on the

basalt, and parallel moraines defining themselves like ramparts

upon the plain.

At New Haven I passed several days at the house of Professor

Silliman, with whom I have been in correspondence for several

years. The University (Yale) owes to the efforts of the Professor a

fine collection of minerals and extensive physical and chemical

apparatus. Silliman is the patriarch of science in America. For

thirty years he has edited an important scientific journal, the

channel through which, ever since its foundation, European

scientific researches have reached America. . .One of his

sons-in-law, Mr. Shepard,* (* An error: Mr. Shepard was not the

son-in-law of Professor Silliman.--ED.) is also chemical professor

in the University of South Carolina. Another, Mr. Dana, still a

very young man, strikes me as likely to be the most distinguished

naturalist of the United States. He was a member of the expedition

around the world under the command of Captain Wilkes, and has just

published a magnificent volume containing monographs of all the

species of polyps and corals, with curious observations on their

mode of growth and on the coral islands. I was surprised to find in

the collection at New Haven a fine specimen of the great fossil

salamander of Oeningen, the "Homo diluvii testis" of Scheuchzer.

From New Haven I went to New York by steamboat. The Sound, between

Long Island and the coast of Connecticut, presents a succession of

cheerful towns and villages, with single houses scattered over the

country, while magnificent trees overhang the sea; we constantly

disturbed numbers of aquatic birds which, at our approach,

fluttered up around the steamer, only to alight farther on. I have

never seen such flocks of ducks and gulls.

At New York I hastened to see Auguste Mayor, of whom my uncle will

no doubt have given you news, since I wrote to him. Obliged to

continue my road in order to join Mr. Gray at Princeton I stopped

but one day in New York, the greater part of which I passed with

Mr. Redfield, author of a paper on the fossil fishes of

Connecticut. His collection, which he has placed at my disposal,

has great interest for me; it contains a large number of fossil

fishes of different kinds, from a formation in which but one

species has been found in Europe. The new red sandstone of

Connecticut will also fill a gap in the history of fossil fishes,

and this acquisition is so much the more important, because, at the

epoch of the gres bigarre, a marked change took place in the

anatomical character of fishes. It presents an intermediate type

between the primitive fishes of the ancient deposits and the more

regular forms of the jurassic deposits.

Mr. Asa Gray, professor of botany at Cambridge, near Boston, had

offered to accompany me on my journey to Washington. We were to

meet at the house of Professor Torrey, at Princeton, a small town

half a day's journey from New York, and the seat of a considerable

university, one of the oldest in the United States. The physical

department, under the direction of Professor Henry, is remarkably

rich in models of machinery and in electrical apparatus, to which

the professor especially devotes himself. The museum contains a

collection of animals and fossil remains. In the environs of the

town, in the ditches, is found a rare kind of turtle, remarkable

for the form of the jaws and the length of the tail. I wish very

much to procure one, were it only to oblige Professor Johannes

Muller, of Berlin, who especially desires one for investigation.

But I have failed thus far; the turtles are already withdrawn into

their winter quarters. Mr. Torrey promises me some, however, in the

spring. It is not easy to get them because their bite is dreaded.

After this I passed four days in Philadelphia. Here,

notwithstanding my great desire to see the beautiful country along

the shores of the rich bay of Delaware and the banks of the

Schuylkill, between which the city lies, I was entirely occupied

with the magnificent collections of the Academy of Science and of

the Philosophical Society. The zoological collections of the

Academy of Science are the oldest in the United States, the only

ones, except those of the Wilkes Expedition, which can equal in

interest those of Europe. There are the collections of Say, the

earliest naturalist of distinction in the United States; there are

also the fossil remains and the animals described by Harlan, by

Godman, and by Hayes, and the fossils described by Conrad and

Morton. Dr. Morton's unique collection of human skulls is also to

be found in Philadelphia. Imagine a series of six hundred skulls,

mostly Indian, of all the tribes who now inhabit or formerly

inhabited America. Nothing like it exists elsewhere. This

collection alone is worth a journey to America. Dr. Morton has had

the kindness to give me a copy of his great illustrated work

representing all the types of his collection. Quite recently a

generous citizen of Philadelphia has enriched this museum with the

fine collection of birds belonging to the Duke of Rivoli. He bought

it for 37,000 francs, and presented it to his native city.

The number of fossil remains comprised in these collections is very

considerable; mastodons especially, and fossils of the cretaceous

and jurassic deposits. . .Imagine that all this is at my full

disposal for description and illustration, and you will understand

my pleasure. The liberality of the American naturalists toward me

is unparalleled.

I must not omit to mention Mr. Lea's collection of fresh-water

shells,--a series of the magnificent Unios of the rivers and lakes

of America, comprising four hundred species, represented by some

thirty specimens of each. Mr. Lea has promised me specimens of all

the species. Had I not been bound by an engagement at Washington,

and could I have remained three or four days longer in order to

label and pack them, I might have taken at once these valuable

objects, which will be of great importance in verifying and

rectifying the synonyms of European conchologists. After having

seen the astonishing variations undergone by these shells in their

growth, I am satisfied that all which European naturalists have

written on this subject must be revised. Only with the help of a

very full series of individuals can one fully understand these

animals, and we have only single specimens in our collections. If I

had time and means to have drawings made of all these forms, the

collection of Mr. Lea would be at my command for the purpose, and

the work would be a very useful one for science.

There are several other private and public collections at

Philadelphia, which I have only seen cursorily; that of the Medical

School, for instance, and that of the older Peale, who discovered

the first mastodon found in the United States, now mounted in his

museum. Beside these, there is the collection of Dr. Griffith, rich

in skulls from the Gulf of Mexico; that of Mr. Ord, and others.

During my stay in Philadelphia, there was also an exhibition of

industrial products at the Franklin Institute, where I especially

remarked the chemical department. There are no less than three

professors of chemistry in Philadelphia,--Mr. Hare, Mr. Booth, and

Mr. Frazer. The first is, I think, the best known in Europe.

How a nearer view changes the aspect of things! I thought myself

tolerably familiar with all that is doing in science in the United

States, but I was far from anticipating so much that is interesting

and important. What is wanting to all these men is neither zeal nor

knowledge. In both, they seem to compete with us, and in ardor and

activity they even surpass most of our savans. What they need is

leisure. I have never felt more forcibly what I owe to the king for

enabling me to live for science alone, undisturbed by anxieties and

distractions. Here, I do not lose a moment, and when I receive

invitations outside the circle of men whom I care particularly to

know, I decline, on the ground that I am not free to dispose for my

pleasure of time which does not belong to me. For this no one can

quarrel with me, and so far as I myself am concerned, it is much

better.

I stopped at Baltimore only long enough to see the city. It was

Sunday, and as I could make no visits, and was anxious to arrive in

good time at Washington, I took advantage of the first train. The

capital of the United States is laid out upon a gigantic scale,

and, consequently, portions of the different quarters are often to

be traced only by isolated houses here and there,--a condition

which has caused it to be called the "City of Magnificent

Distances." Some of the streets are very handsome, and the capitol

itself is really imposing. Their profound veneration for the

founder of their liberty and their republic is a noble trait of the

American people. The evidences of this are to be seen everywhere.

No less than two hundred towns, villages, and counties bear his

name, rather to the inconvenience of the postal administration.

After having visited the capitol and the presidential mansion, and

delivered my letters for the Prussian Minister, I went to the

Museum of the National Institute. I was impatient to satisfy myself

as to the scientific value of the results obtained in the field of

my own studies by the voyage of Captain Wilkes around the world,

--this voyage having been the object of equally exaggerated praise

and criticism. I confess that I was agreeably surprised by the

richness of the zoological and geological collections; I do not

think any European expedition has done more or better; and in some

departments, in that of the Crustacea, for example, the collection

at Washington surpasses in beauty and number of specimens all that

I have seen. It is especially to Dr. Pickering and Mr. Dana that

these collections are due. As the expedition did not penetrate to

the interior of the continents in tropical regions, the collections

of birds and mammals, which fell to the charge of Mr. Peale, are

less considerable. Mr. Gray tells me, however, that the botanical

collections are very large. More precious, perhaps, than all the

collections are the magnificent drawings of mollusks, zoophytes,

fishes, and reptiles, painted from life by Mr. Drayton. All these

plates, to the number of about six hundred, are to be engraved, and

indeed are already, in part, executed. I can only compare them to

those of the Astrolabe, although they are very superior in variety

of position and naturalness of attitude to those of the French

Expedition. This is particularly true of the mollusks and fishes.

The zoophytes are to be published; they are admirable in detail.

The hydrographic portion and the account of the voyage, edited by

Captain Wilkes (unhappily he was absent and I did not see him), has

been published for some time, and comprises an enormous mass of

information, its chief feature being charts to the number of two

hundred. It is amazing; the number of soundings extraordinarily

large.* (* Agassiz subsequently took some part in working up the

fish collections from this expedition, but the publication was

stopped for want of means to carry it on.)

At Washington are also to be seen the headquarters of the Coast

Survey, where the fine charts of the coasts and harbors now making

under direction of Dr. Bache are executed. These charts are

admirably finished. Dr. Bache, the superintendent, was in camp, so

that I could not deliver my letters for him. I saw, however,

Colonel Abert, the head of the topographic office, who gave me

important information about the West for the very season when I am

likely to be there. I am indebted to him also for a series of

documents concerning the upper Missouri and Mississippi, California

and Oregon, printed by order of the government, and for a

collection of fresh-water shells from those regions. I should like

to offer him, in return, such sheets of the Federal Map as have

appeared. I beg Guyot to send them to me by the first occasion.

As I was due in Boston on an appointed day I was obliged to defer

my visit to Richmond, Charleston, and other places in the South. I

had, beside, gathered so much material that I had need of a few

quiet weeks to consider and digest it all. Returning therefore to

Philadelphia, I made there the acquaintance of Mr. Haldeman, author

of a monograph on the fresh-water shells of the United States. I

had made an appointment to meet him at Philadelphia, being unable

to make a detour of fifty leagues in order to visit him at his own

home, which is situated beyond the lines of rapid transit. He is a

distinguished naturalist, equally well versed in several branches

of our science. He has made me acquainted, also, with a young

naturalist from the interior of Pennsylvania, Mr. Baird, professor

at Dickinson College, in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, who offered me

duplicates from his collections of birds and other animals. In

order to avail myself more promptly of this and like acquisitions,

I wish that M. Coulon would send me at the close of the winter all

that he can procure of the common European birds, of our small

mammalia, and some chamois skins, adding also the fish that Charles

put aside for me before his departure. It would be safest to send

them to the care of Auguste Mayor.

At Philadelphia I separated from my traveling companion, Mr. Gray,

who was obliged to return to his home. From Philadelphia, Mr.

Haldeman and Mr. Lea accompanied me to Bristol, where Mr. Vanuxem

possesses an important collection of fossils from ancient deposits,

duplicates of which he promises me. Mr. Vanuxem is one of the

official geologists of the State of New York, and author of one of

a series of volumes upon the geology of the State, about which I

shall presently have something to say. To gain time I took the

night train from Bristol to New York, and arrived at Mayor's at

midnight, having written him to expect me.

The next day I visited the market, and in five days I had filled a

great barrel with different kinds of fish and fresh-water turtles,

beside making several skeletons and various dissections of

mollusks. Wishing to employ my time as usefully as possible, I

postponed my visits to the savans of the city, and the delivery of

my letters, till I was on the eve of departure, that I might avoid

all invitations. I had especial pleasure in making the acquaintance

of the two Le Contes, father and son, who own the finest collection

of insects in the United States. I can easily make some thousand

exchanges with them when I receive those that M. Coulon has put

aside for me, with a view to exchange. . .Every morning Auguste

Mayor went with me to the market before going to his office and

helped me to carry my basket when it was too heavy. One day I

brought back no less than twenty-four turtles, taken in one draught

of the net. I made four skeletons, and dissected several others.

Under such conditions the day ought to have thirty-six working

hours.

Were I an artist, instead of describing my voyage from New York to

Albany, I would draw you a panorama of the shores of the Hudson. I

know nothing except the banks of the Rhine to compare with those of

this magnificent river. The resemblance between them is striking;

the sites, the nature of the rocks, the appearance of the towns and

villages, the form of the Albany bridges, even the look of the

inhabitants, of whom the greater number are of Dutch or German

origin,--all are similar.

I stopped at West Point to make the acquaintance of Professor

Bailey of the Military School there. I already knew him by

reputation. He is the author of very detailed and interesting

researches upon the microscopic animalcules of America. I had a

pamphlet to deliver to him from Ehrenberg, who has received from

him a great deal of material for his large work on fossil

Infusoria. I spent three most delightful days with him, passed

chiefly in examining his collections, from which he gave me many

specimens. We also made several excursions in the neighborhood, in

order to study the erratic phenomena and the traces of glaciers,

which everywhere cover the surface of the country. Polished rocks,

as distinct as possible; moraines continuous over large spaces;

stratified drift, as on the borders of the glacier of Grindelwald;

in short, all the usual accompaniments of the glaciers are there,

and one may follow the "roches moutonnees" with the eye to a great

distance.

Albany is the seat of government of the State of New York. It has a

medical school, an agricultural society, a geological museum, an

anatomical museum, and a museum of natural history. The government

has just completed the publication of a work, unique of its kind, a

natural history of the State in sixteen volumes, quarto, with

plates; twenty-five hundred copies have been printed, only five

hundred of which are for sale, the rest being distributed

throughout the State. Four volumes are devoted to geology and

mining alone, the others to zoology, botany, and agriculture. Yes,

twenty-five hundred copies of a work in sixteen volumes, quarto,

scattered throughout the State of New York alone! When I think that

I began my studies in natural history by copying hundreds of pages

from a Lamarck which some one had lent me, and that to-day there is

a State in which the smallest farmer may have access to a costly

work, worth a library to him in itself, I bless the efforts of

those who devote themselves to public instruction. . .I have not

neglected the opportunity offered by the North River (the Hudson)

for the study of the fresh-water fishes of this country. I have

filled a barrel with them. The species differ greatly from ours,

with the exception of the perch, the eel, the pike, and the sucker,

in which only a practiced eye could detect the difference; all the

rest belong to genera unknown in Europe, or, at least, in

Switzerland. . .

I was fortunate enough to procure also, in the few days of my stay,

all the species taken in the lakes and rivers around Albany.

Several others have been given me from Lake Superior. Since my

return to Boston I have been collecting birds and comparing them

with those of Europe. If M. Coulon could obtain for me a collection

of European eggs, even the most common, I could exchange them for

an admirable series of the native species here. I have also

procured several interesting mammals; among others, two species of

hares different from those I brought from Halifax, striped

squirrels, etc.