I will tell you another time something of the collections of Boston

and Cambridge, the only ones in the United States which can rival

those of Philadelphia. To-day I have made my first attempt at

lecturing. Of that, also, I will tell you more in my next letter,

when I know how it has been liked. It is no small matter to satisfy

an audience of three thousand people in a language with which you

are but little familiar. . .

CHAPTER 14.

1846-1847: AGE 39-40.

Course of Lectures in Boston on Glaciers.

Correspondence with Scientific Friends in Europe.

House in East Boston.

Household and Housekeeping.

Illness.

Letter to Elie de Beaumont.

Letter to James D. Dana.

THE course at the Lowell Institute was immediately followed by one

upon glaciers, the success of which was guaranteed by private

subscription,--an unnecessary security, since the audience,

attracted by the novelty and picturesqueness of the subject, as

well as by the charm of presentation and fullness of illustration,

was large and enthusiastic.

Agassiz was evidently encouraged himself by his success, for toward

the close of his Lowell Lectures he writes as follows:--

TO CHANCELLOR FAVARGEZ.

BOSTON, December 31, 1846.

. . .Beside my lecture course, now within a few days of its

conclusion, and the ever-increasing work which grows on my hands in

proportion as I become familiar with the environs of Boston, where

I shall still remain a few weeks longer, I have so much to do in

keeping up my journals, notes, and observations that I have not

found a moment to write you since the last steamer. . .Never did

the future look brighter to me than now. If I could for a moment

forget that I have a scientific mission to fulfill, to which I will

never prove recreant, I could easily make more than enough by

lectures which would be admirably paid and are urged upon me, to

put me completely at my ease hereafter. But I will limit myself to

what I need in order to repay those who have helped me through a

difficult crisis, and that I can do without even turning aside from

my researches. Beyond that all must go again to science,--there

lies my true mission. I rejoice in what I have been able to do thus

far, and I hope that at Berlin they will be satisfied with the

results which I shall submit to competent judges on my return. If I

only have time to finish what I have begun! You know my plans are

not wont to be too closely restricted.

Why do you not write to me? Am I then wholly forgotten in your

pleasant circle while my thoughts are every day constantly with my

Neuchatel friends?. . .

Midnight, January 1st. A happy new year to you and to all members

of the Tuesday Club. Bonjour et bon an. . .

Some portions of Agassiz's correspondence with his European friends

and colleagues during the winter and summer of 1847 give a clew to

the occupations and interests of his new life, and keep up the

thread of the old one.

LOUIS AGASSIZ TO M. DECAISNE.

February, 1847.

. . .I write only to thank you for the pleasure your note gave me.

When one is far away, as I am, from everything belonging to one's

past life, the merest sign of friendly remembrance is a boon. Do

not infer from this that America does not please me. On the

contrary, I am delighted with my stay here, although I do not quite

understand all that surrounds me; or I should perhaps rather say

that many principles which, theoretically, we have been wont to

think perfect in themselves, seem in their application to involve

results quite contrary to our expectations. I am constantly asking

myself which is better,--our old Europe, where the man of

exceptional gifts can give himself absolutely to study, opening

thus a wider horizon for the human mind, while at his side

thousands barely vegetate in degradation or at least in

destitution; or this new world, where the institutions tend to keep

all on one level as part of the general mass,--but a mass, be it

said, which has no noxious elements. Yes, the mass here is

decidedly good. All the world lives well, is decently clad, learns

something, is awake and interested. Instruction does not, as in some

parts of Germany for instance, furnish a man with an intellectual

tool and then deny him the free use of it. The strength of America

lies in the prodigious number of individuals who think and work at

the same time. It is a severe test of pretentious mediocrity, but

I fear it may also efface originality . . .You are right in

believing that one works, or at least that one CAN work, better

in Paris than elsewhere, and I should esteem myself happy if I had

my nest there, but who will make it for me? I am myself incapable

of making efforts for anything but my work. . .

AGASSIZ TO MILNE EDWARDS.

May 31, 1847.

. . .After six weeks of an illness which has rendered me unfit for

serious work I long to be transported into the circle of my Paris

friends, to find myself again among the men whose devotion to

science gives them a clear understanding of its tendency and

influence. Therefore I take my way quite naturally to the Rue

Cuvier and mount your stairs, confident that there I shall find

this chosen society. Question upon question greets me regarding

this new world, on the shore of which I have but just landed, and

yet about which I have so much to say that I fear to tire my

listeners.

Naturalist as I am, I cannot but put the people first,--the people

who have opened this part of the American continent to European

civilization. What a people! But to understand them you must live

among them. Our education, the principles of our society, the

motives of our actions, differ so greatly from what I see here,

that I should try in vain to give you an idea of this great nation,

passing from childhood to maturity with the faults of spoiled

children, and yet with the nobility of character and the enthusiasm

of youth. Their look is wholly turned toward the future; their

social life is not yet irrevocably bound to exacting antecedents,

and thus nothing holds them back, unless, perhaps, a consideration

for the opinion in which they may be held in Europe. This deference

toward England (unhappily, to them, Europe means almost exclusively

England) is a curious fact in the life of the American people. They

know us but little, even after having made a tour in France, or

Italy, or Germany. From England they receive their literature, and

the scientific work of central Europe reaches them through English

channels. . .Notwithstanding this kind of dependence upon England,

in which American savans have voluntarily placed themselves, I have

formed a high opinion of their acquirements, since I have learned

to know them better, and I think we should render a real service to

them and to science, by freeing them from this tutelage, raising

them in their own eyes, and drawing them also a little more toward

ourselves. Do not think that these remarks are prompted by the

least antagonism toward English savans, whom no one more than

myself has reason to regard with affection and esteem. But since

these men are so worthy to soar on their own wings, why not help

them to take flight? They need only confidence, and some special

recognition from Europe would tend to give them this. . .

Among the zoologists of this country I would place Mr. Dana at the

head. He is still very young, fertile in ideas, rich in facts,

equally able as geologist and mineralogist. When his work on corals

is completed, you can better judge of him. One of these days you

will make him a correspondent of the Institute, unless he kills

himself with work too early, or is led away by his tendency to

generalization. Then there is Gould, author of the malacologic

fauna of Massachusetts, and who is now working up the mollusks of

the Wilkes Expedition. De Kay and Lea, whose works have long been

known, are rather specialists, I should say. I do not yet know

Holbrook personally. Pickering, of the Wilkes Expedition, is a well

of science, perhaps the most erudite naturalist here. Haldeman

knows the fresh-water gasteropods of this country admirably well,

and has published a work upon them. Le Conte is a critical

entomologist who seems to me thoroughly familiar with what is doing

in Europe. In connection with Haldeman he is working up the

articulates of the Wilkes Expedition. Wyman, recently made

professor at Cambridge, is an excellent comparative anatomist, and

the author of several papers on the organization of fishes. . .The

botanists are less numerous, but Asa Gray and Dr. Torrey are known

wherever the study of botany is pursued. Gray, with his

indefatigable zeal, will gain upon his competitors. . .The

geologists and mineralogists form the most numerous class among the

savans of the country. The fact that every state has its corps of

official geologists has tended to develop study in this direction

to the detriment of other branches, and will later, I fear, tend to

the detriment of science itself; for the utilitarian tendency thus

impressed on the work of American geologists will retard their

progress. With us, on the contrary, researches of this kind

constantly tend to assume a more and more scientific character.

Still, the body of American geologists forms, as a whole, a most

respectable contingent. The names of Charles T. Jackson, James

Hall, Hitchcock, Henry and William Rogers (two brothers), have long

been familiar to European science. After the geologists, I would

mention Dr. Morton, of Philadelphia, well known as the author of

several papers upon fossils, and still better by his great work

upon the indigenous races of America. He is a man of science in the

best sense; admirable both as regards his knowledge and his

activity. He is the pillar of the Philadelphia Academy.

The chemists and physicists, again, form another utilitarian class

of men in this country. As with many of them purely scientific work

is not their sole object, it is difficult for an outsider to

distinguish between the clever manipulators and those who have

higher aims. . .

The mathematicians have also their culte, dating back to Bowditch,

the translator of the "Mecanique celeste," and the author of a work

on practical navigation. He died in Boston, where they are now

erecting a magnificent monument to his memory. Mr. Peirce,

professor at Cambridge, is considered here the equal of our great

mathematicians. It is not for me, who cannot do a sum in addition,

to pretend to a judgment in the matter.* (* Though Agassiz was no

mathematician, and Peirce no naturalist, they soon found that their

intellectual aims were the same, and they became very close

friends.)

You are familiar, no doubt, with the works of Captain Wilkes and

the report of his journey around the world. His charts are much

praised. The charts of the coasts and harbors of the United States,

made under the direction of Dr. Bache and published at government

expense, are admirable. The reports of Captain Fremont concerning

his travels are also most interesting and instructive; to botanists

especially so, on account of the scientific notes accompanying

them.

I will not speak at length of my own work,--my letter is already

too long. During the winter I have been chiefly occupied in making

collections of fishes and birds, and also of the various woods. The

forests here differ greatly from ours in the same latitude. I have

even observed that they resemble astonishingly the forests of the

Molasse epoch, and the analogy is heightened by that between the

animals of this country and those of the eastern coasts of Asia as

compared with those of the Molasse, such as the chelydras, andreas,

etc. I will send a report upon this to M. Brongniart as soon as I

have the time to prepare it. On the erratic phenomena, also, I have

made numerous observations, which I am anxious to send to M. de

Beaumont. These phenomena, so difficult of explanation with us,

become still more complicated here, both on account of their

contact with the sea and of the vast stretches of flat country over

which they extend.

For the last few days I have been especially occupied with the

development of the medusae. In studying the actiniae I have made a

striking discovery, and I should be glad if you would communicate

it to the Academy in advance of the illustrated paper on the same

subject, which I hope soon to send you. Notwithstanding their

star-like appearance, the star-fishes have, like the sea-urchins,

indications by no means doubtful, of a symmetrical disposition of

their organs in pairs, and an anterior and posterior extremity

easily recognized by the special form of their oral opening. I have

now satisfied myself that the madrepores have something analogous

to this in the arrangement of their partitions, so that I am

tempted to believe that this tendency to a symmetrical arrangement

of parts in pairs, is a general character of polyps, disguised by

their radiating form. Among the medusae something similar exists in

the disposition of the marginal appendages and the ocelli. I attach

the more importance to these observations, because they may lead to

a clearer perception than we have yet reached of the natural

relations between the radiates and the other great types of the

animal kingdom.

This summer I hope to explore the lower lakes of Canada, and also

the regions lying to the eastward as far as Nova Scotia; in the

autumn I shall resume my excursions on the coast and in the

Alleghenies, and shall pass a part of the winter in the Carolinas.

I will soon write to Monsieur Brongniart concerning my plans for

next year. If the Museum were desirous to aid me in my

undertakings, I should like to make a journey of exploration next

summer in a zone thus far completely neglected by naturalists, the

region, namely, of the small lakes to the west of Lake Superior,

where the Mississippi takes its rise, and also of that lying

between this great basin of fresh water and the southern arm of

Hudson Bay. I would employ the autumn in exploring the great valley

of the Mississippi, and would pass the winter on the borders of the

Gulf of Mexico.

To carry out such projects, however, I have need of larger

resources than I can create by my own efforts, and I shall soon be

at the end of the subsidy granted me by the King of Prussia. I

shall, however, subordinate all these projects to the possibilities

of which you kindly tell me. Notwithstanding the interest offered

by the exploration of a country so rich as this, notwithstanding

the gratifying welcome I have received here, I feel, after all,

that nowhere can one work better than in our old Europe, and the

friendship you have shown me is a more than sufficient motive,

impelling me to return as soon as possible to Paris. Remember me

to our common friends. I have made some sufficiently interesting

collections which I shall forward to the Museum; they will show

you that I have done my best to fulfill my promises, forgetting

no one. . .

In the summer of 1847 Agassiz established himself in a small house

at East Boston, sufficiently near the sea to be a convenient

station for marine collections. Here certain members of his old

working corps assembled about him, and it soon became, like every

place he had ever inhabited, a hive of industry. Chief among his

companions were Count Francois de Pourtales, who had accompanied

him to this country; Mr. E. Desor, who soon followed him to

America; and Mr. Jacques Burkhardt, who had preceded them all, and

was now draughtsman in chief to the whole party. To his labors were

soon added those of Mr. A. Sonrel, the able lithographic artist,

who illustrated the most important works subsequently published by

Agassiz. To an exquisite skill in his art he added a quick,

intelligent perception of structural features from the naturalist's

point of view, which made his work doubly valuable. Besides those

above-mentioned, there were several assistants who shared the

scientific work in one department or another.

It must be confessed that this rather original establishment had

the aspect of a laboratory rather than a home, domestic comfort

being subordinate to scientific convenience. Every room served in

some sort the purposes of an aquarium or a studio, while garret and

cellar were devoted to collections. The rules of the household were

sufficiently elastic to suit the most erratic student. A sliding

scale for meals allowed the greatest freedom for excursions along

the neighboring shores and beaches, and punctuality in work was the

only punctuality demanded.

Agassiz himself was necessarily often absent, for the maintenance

of the little colonydepended in great degree upon his exertions.

During the winter of 1847, while continuing his lectures in Boston

and its vicinity, he lectured in other places also. It is difficult

to track his course at this time; but during the winters of 1847

and 1848 he lectured in all the large eastern cities, New York,

Albany, Philadelphia, and Charleston, S.C. Everywhere he drew large

crowds, and in those days his courses of lectures were rarely

allowed to close without some public expression of gratitude and

appreciation from the listeners. Among his papers are preserved

several sets of resolutions from medical and scientific societies,

from classes of students, and from miscellaneous audiences,

attesting the enthusiasm awakened by his instruction. What he

earned in this way enabled him to carry on his work and support his

assistants. Still, the strain upon his strength, combined with all

that he was doing beside in purely scientific work, was severe, and

before the twelvemonth was out he was seriously ill. At this time

Dr. B.E. Cotting, a physician whose position as curator of the

Lowell Institute had brought him into contact with Agassiz, took

him home to his house in the country, where he tended him through

some weeks of tedious illness, hastening his convalescence by

excursions in all the neighboring country, from which they returned

laden with specimens,--plants, birds, etc. In this hospitable home

he passed his fortieth birthday, the first in this country. His

host found him standing thoughtful and abstracted by the window.

"Why so sad?" he asked. "That I am so old, and have done so

little," was the answer.

After a few weeks he was able to return to his work, and the next

letter gives some idea of his observations, especially upon the

traces of glacial action in the immediate vicinity of Boston and

upon the shores of Massachusetts Bay. Indeed, he never lost sight

of these features, which had caught his attention the moment he

landed on the continent. In one of his later lectures he gives a

striking account of this first impression.

"In the autumn of 1846," he says, "six years after my visit to

Great Britain in search of glaciers, I sailed for America. When the

steamer stopped at Halifax, eager to set foot on the new continent

so full of promise for me, I sprang on shore and started at a brisk

pace for the heights above the landing. On the first undisturbed

ground, after leaving the town, I was met by the familiar signs,

the polished surfaces, the furrows and scratches, the LINE

ENGRAVING, so well known in the Old World; and I became convinced

of what I had already anticipated as the logical sequence of my

previous investigations, that here also this great agent had been

at work." The incident seems a very natural introduction to the

following letter, written a few months later:--

TO ELIE DE BEAUMONT.

BOSTON, August 31, 1847.

. . .I have waited to write until I should have some facts

sufficiently important to claim your attention. In truth, the study

of the marine animals, which I am, for the first time, able to

observe in their natural conditions of existence, has engrossed me

almost exclusively since I came to the United States, and only

incidentally, as it were, I have turned my attention to

paleontology and geology. I must, however, except the glacial

phenomena, a problem, the solution of which always interests me

deeply. This great question, far from presenting itself more simply

here, is complicated by peculiarities never brought to my notice in

Europe. Happily for me, Mr. Desor, who had been in Scandinavia

before joining me here, called my attention at once to certain

points of resemblance between the phenomena there and those which I

had seen in the neighborhood of Boston. Since then, we have made

several excursions together, have visited Niagara, and, in short,

have tried to collect all the special facts of glacial phenomena in

America. . .You are, no doubt, aware that the whole rocky surface

of the ground here is polished. I do not think that anywhere in the

world there exist polished and rounded rocks in better preservation

or on a larger scale. Here, as elsewhere, erratic debris are

scattered over these surfaces, scratched pebbles impacted in mud,

forming unstratified masses mixed with and covered by large erratic

boulders, more or less furrowed or scratched, the upper ones being

usually angular and without marks. The absence of moraines,

properly so-called, in a country so little broken, is not

surprising; I have, however, seen very distinct ones in some

valleys of the White Mountains and in Vermont. Up to this time

there had been nothing very new in the aspect of the phenomena as a

whole; but on examining attentively the internal arrangement of all

these materials, especially in the neighborhood of the sea, one

soon becomes convinced that the ocean has partially covered and

more or less remodeled them. In certain places there are patches of

stratified sand interposed between masses of glacial drift-deposit;

elsewhere, banks of sand and pebbles crown the irregularities of

the glacial deposit, or fill in its depressions; in other

localities the glacial pebbles may be washed and completely cleared

of mud, retaining, however, their markings; or again, these

markings may have disappeared, and the material is arranged in

lines or ramparts, as it were, of diverse conformation, in which

Mr. Desor recognized all the modifications of the "oesars" of

Scandinavia. The disposition of the oesars, as seen here, is

evidently due entirely to the action of the waves, and their

frequency along the coast is a proof of this. In a late excursion

with Captain Davis on board a government vessel I learned to

understand the mode of formation of the submarine dikes bordering

the coast at various distances, which would be oesars were they

elevated; with the aid of the dredge I satisfied myself of their

identity. With these facts before me I cannot doubt that the oesars

of the United States consist essentially of glacial material

remodeled by the sea; while farther inland, though here and there

reaching the sea-coast, we have unchanged glacial drift deposit. At

some points the alteration is so slight as to denote only a

momentary rise of the sea. Under these circumstances one would

naturally look for fossils in the drift, and M. Desor, in company

with M. de Pourtales, was the first to find them, at Brooklyn, in

Long Island, which lies to the south of New York. They were

imbedded in a glacial clay deposit, having all the ordinary

character of such deposits, with only slight traces of stratified

sand. It is true that the greater number of these fossils (all

belonging to species now living on the coast) were broken into

angular fragments, not excepting even the thick tests of the Venus

mercenaria. . .

The suburb of Boston where I am living (East Boston) is built on an

island, one kilometer and a half long, extending from north to

southeast, and varying in width at different points from two to six

or seven hundred metres. Its height above the sea-level is about

sixty feet. This little island is composed entirely of glacial

muddy deposit, containing scratched pebbles mixed with larger

boulders or blocks, and covered also with a considerable number of

boulders of divers forms and dimensions. At East Boston you cannot

see what underlies this deposit; but no doubt it rests upon a

rounded mass of granite, polished and grooved like several others

in Boston harbor. . .

In our journey to Niagara, Mr. Desor and I assured ourselves that

the river deposits, in which, among other things, the mastodon is

found with the fresh-water shells of Goat Island, are posterior to

the drift. It is a fact worth consideration that the mastodons

found in Europe are buried in true tertiary formations, while the

great mastodon of the United States is certainly posterior to the

drift. . .In another letter I will tell you something of my

observations upon the geographical distribution of marine animals

at different depths and on different bottoms, and also upon the

relations between this distribution and that of the fossils in the

tertiary deposits. . .* (* I have left out a portion of this letter

which appeared in the first edition of the book, because I learned

that the facts there given concerning the deposit of Zostera marina

were not substantiated, and that Agassiz consequently did not

forward the letter in its first form. The remainder of this chapter

appears in this edition for the first time.--E.C.A.)

Although so deeply interested by the geological features of the

country, Agassiz was nevertheless drawn even more strongly to the

study of the marine animals for which his position on the sea-coast

gave him such opportunities as he had never before had. The next

letter shows how fully his time was occupied, and how fascinating

this new field of observation was to him. The English is still a

little foreign. He was not yet quite at home in the language which

he afterward wrote and spoke with such fluency.

TO JAMES D. DANA.

EAST BOSTON, September, 1847.

. . .What have you thought of me all this time, not having written

a single line neither to you nor to Professor Silliman after the

kind reception I have met with by your whole family? Pray excuse me

and consider, if you please, the difficulty under which I labor,

having every day to look after hundreds of new things which always

carry me beyond usual hours of working, when I am then so much

tired that I can think of nothing. Nevertheless, it is a delightful

life to be allowed to examine in a fresh state so many things of

which I had but an imperfect knowledge from books. The Boston

market supplies me with more than I can examine.

Since I had the pleasure of seeing you I have been very successful

in collecting specimens, especially in New York and Albany. In

Washington I have been delighted to see the collections of the

Exploring Expedition. They entitle you to the highest thanks from

all scientific naturalists, and I hope it will be also felt in the

same manner by your countrymen at large. . .I long for the

opportunity of studying your fossil shells. As soon as I have gone

over my Lowell lectures I hope to be able to move. I shall only

pack up what I have already collected; but I cannot yet tell you

precisely the time.

I began studying your "Zoophytes," but it is so rich a book that I

proceed slowly. For years I have not learned so much from a book as

from yours. As I soon saw I would not be able to go through in a

short time, I sent a short preliminary report to one of our most

widely diffused papers, "Preussische Staats Zeitung," giving only

the general impression of your work, and I shall send to Erichson a

fuller scientific report after I have done with the whole volume.

As I happen to have a lithograph of the original specimen of the

Homo deluvii testis of Scheuchzer, I will forward it to Professor

Silliman with this letter. I expect you will find it the

counterpart of the specimen in your museum; or very nearly in the

same state of preservation.

Having just lately received my books, I also inclose a pamphlet

from Ehrenberg, which he desired me to leave with you, and also

the books Professor Silliman has had the kindness to lend me. . .

I have made many observations which I wish to publish, but I can

find no time to write them for you now. I must wait till the

weather is so dull as to bring nothing into the hands of gunners

and fishermen. . .

So closed his first year in America. The second unfolded events

both in the home he had left and in the one to which he had

unconsciously come, which were to shape his future career, and

exert the most powerful influence upon his whole life.

CHAPTER 15.

1847-1850: AGE 40-43.

Excursions on Coast Survey Steamer.

Relations with Dr. Bache, the Superintendent of the Coast Survey.

Political Disturbances in Switzerland.

Change of Relations with Prussia.

Scientific School established in Cambridge.

Chair of Natural History offered to Agassiz.

Acceptance.

Removal to Cambridge.

Literary and Scientific Associations there and in Boston.

Household in Cambridge.

Beginning of Museum.

Journey to Lake Superior.

"Report, with Narration."

"Principles of Zoology," by Agassiz and Gould.

Letters from European Friends respecting these Publications.

Letter from Hugh Miller.

Second Marriage.

Arrival of his Children in America.

One of Agassiz's great pleasures in the summer of 1847 consisted in

excursions on board the Coast Survey steamer Bibb, then employed in

the survey of the harbor and bay of Boston, under command of

Captain (afterward Admiral) Charles Henry Davis. Under no more

kindly auspices could Agassiz's relations with this department of

government work have been begun. "My cabin," writes Captain Davis,

after their first trip together, "seems lonely without you."

Hitherto the sea-shore had been a closed book to the Swiss

naturalist, and now it opened to him a field of research almost as

stimulating as his own glaciers. Born and bred among the mountains,

he knew marine animals only as they can be known in dried and

alcoholic specimens, or in a fossil state. From the Bibb he writes

to a friend on shore: "I learn more here in a day than in months

from books or dried specimens. Captain Davis is kindness itself.

Everything I can wish for is at my disposal so far as it is

possible."

Dr. Bache was at this time Superintendent of the Coast Survey, and

he saw at once how the work of the naturalist might ally itself

with the professional work of the Survey to the greater usefulness

of both. From the beginning to the end of his American life,

therefore, the hospitalities of the United States Coast Survey were

open to Agassiz. As a guest on board her vessels he studied the

reefs of Florida and the Bahama Banks, as well as the formations of

our New England shores. From the deck of the Bibb, in connection

with Count de Pourtales, his first dredging experiments were

undertaken; and his last long voyage around the continent, from

Boston to San Francisco, was made on board the Hassler, a Coast

Survey vessel fitted out for the Pacific shore. Here was another

determining motive for his stay in this country. Under no other

government, perhaps, could he have had opportunities so invaluable

to a naturalist.

But events were now passing in Europe which made his former

position there, as well as that of many of his old friends, wholly

unstable. In February, 1848, the proclamation of the French

republic broke upon Europe like a clap of thunder from a clear sky.

The news created great disturbances in Switzerland, and especially

in the canton of Neuchatel, where a military force was immediately

organized by the republican party in opposition to the

conservatives, who would fain have continued loyal to the Prussian

king. For the moment all was chaos, and the prospects of

institutions of learning were seriously endangered. The republican

party carried the day; the canton of Neuchatel ceased to be a

dependence of the Prussian monarchy, and became merged in the

general confederation of Switzerland.

At about the same time that Agassiz, in consequence of this change

of conditions, was honorably discharged from the service of the

Prussian king, a scientific school was organized at Cambridge,

Massachusetts, in direct connection with Harvard University. This

school, known as the Lawrence Scientific School, owed its existence

to the generosity of Abbott Lawrence, formerly United States

Minister at the Court of St. James. He immediately offered the

chair of Natural History (Zoology and Geology) to Agassiz, with a

salary of fifteen hundred dollars, guaranteed by Mr. Lawrence

himself, until such time as the fees of the students should be

worth three thousand dollars to their professor. This time never

came. Agassiz's lectures, with the exception of the more technical

ones addressed to small classes, were always fully attended, but

special students were naturally very few in a department of pure

science, and their fees never raised the salary of the professor

perceptibly. This was, however, counterbalanced in some degree by

the clause in his contract which allowed him entire freedom for

lectures elsewhere, so that he could supplement his restricted

income from other sources.

In accordance with this new position Agassiz now removed his

bachelor household to Cambridge, where he opened his first course

in April, 1848. He could hardly have come to Harvard at a more

auspicious moment, so far as his social and personal relations were

concerned. The college was then on a smaller scale than now, but

upon its list of professors were names which would have given

distinction to any university. In letters, there were Longfellow

and Lowell, and Felton, the genial Greek scholar, of whom

Longfellow himself wrote, "In Attica thy birthplace should have

been." In science, there were Peirce, the mathematician, and Dr.

Asa Gray, then just installed at the Botanical Garden, and Jeffries

Wyman, the comparative anatomist, appointed at about the same time

with Agassiz himself. To these we might almost add, as influencing

the scientific character of Harvard, Dr. Bache, the Superintendent

of the Coast Survey, and Charles Henry Davis, the head of the

Nautical Almanac, since the kindly presence of the former was

constantly invoked as friend and counselor in the scientific

departments, while the latter had his residence in Cambridge, and

was as intimately associated with the interests of Harvard as if he

had been officially connected with the university.

A more agreeable set of men, or one more united by personal

relations and intellectual aims, it would have been difficult to

find. In connection with these names, those of Prescott, Ticknor,

Motley, and Holmes also arise most naturally, for the literary men

and scholars of Cambridge and Boston were closely united; and if

Emerson, in his country home at Concord, was a little more

withdrawn, his influence was powerful in the intellectual life of

the whole community, and acquaintance readily grew to friendship

between him and Agassiz. Such was the pleasant and cultivated

circle into which Agassiz was welcomed in the two cities, which

became almost equally his home, and where the friendships he made

gradually transformed exile into household life and ties.

In Cambridge he soon took his share in giving as well as receiving

hospitalities, and his Saturday evenings were not the less

attractive because of the foreign character and somewhat unwonted

combination of the household. Over its domestic comforts now

presided an old Swiss clergyman, Monsieur Christinat. He had been

attached to Agassiz from childhood, had taken the deepest interest

in his whole career, and, as we have seen, had assisted him to

complete his earlier studies. Now, under the disturbed condition of

things at home, he had thrown in his lot with him in America. "If

your old friend," he writes, "can live with his son Louis, it will

be the height of his happiness." To Agassiz his presence in the

house was a benediction. He looked after the expenses, and acted as

commissary in chief to the colony. Obliged, as Agassiz was,

frequently to be absent on lecturing tours, he could, with perfect

security, intrust the charge of everything connected with the

household to his old friend, from whom he was always sure of an

affectionate welcome on his return. In short, so far as an old man

could, "papa Christinat," as he was universally called in this

miscellaneous family, strove to make good to him the absence of

wife and children.

The make-up of the settlement was somewhat anomalous. The house,

though not large, was sufficiently roomy, and soon after Agassiz

was established there he had the pleasure of receiving under his

roof certain friends and former colleagues, driven from their

moorings in Europe by the same disturbances which had prevented him

from returning there. The arrival among them of Mr. Guyot, with

whom his personal and scientific intimacy was of such long

standing, was a great happiness. It was especially a blessing at

this time, for troubles at home weighed upon Agassiz and depressed

him. His wife, always delicate in health, had died, and although

his children were most affectionately provided for in her family

and his own, they were separated from each other, as well as from

him; nor did he think it wise to bring them while so young, to

America. The presence, therefore, of one who was almost like a

brother in sympathy and companionship, was now more than welcome.

His original staff of co-workers and assistants still continued

with him, and there were frequent guests besides, chiefly

foreigners, who, on arriving in a new country, found their first

anchorage and point of departure in this little European

settlement.

The house stood in a small plot of ground, the cultivation of which

was the delight of papa Christinat. It soon became a miniature

zoological garden, where all sorts of experiments in breeding and

observations on the habits of animals, were carried on. A tank for

turtles and a small alligator in one corner, a large hutch for

rabbits in another, a cage for eagles against the wall, a tame bear

and a family of opossums, made up the menagerie, varied from time

to time by new arrivals.

But Agassiz could not be long in any place without beginning to

form a museum. When he accepted the chair offered him at Cambridge,

there were neither collections nor laboratories belonging to his

department. The specimens indispensable to his lectures were

gathered almost by the day, and his outfit, with the exception of

the illustrations he had brought from Europe, consisted of a

blackboard and a lecture-room. There was no money for the necessary

objects, and the want of it had to be supplied by the professor's

own industry and resources. On the banks of the Charles River, just

where it is crossed by Brighton Bridge, was an old wooden shanty

set on piles; it might have served perhaps, at some time, as a

bathing or a boat house. The use of this was allowed Agassiz for

the storing of such collections as he had brought together. Pine

shelves nailed against the walls served for cases, and with a table

or two for dissection this rough shelter was made to do duty as a

kind of laboratory. The fact is worth noting, for here was the

beginning of the Museum of Comparative Zoology in Cambridge, now

admitted to a place among the great institutions of its kind in the

world.

In the summer of 1848 Agassiz organized an expedition entirely

after his own heart, inasmuch as it combined education with

observation in the field. The younger portion of the party

consisted of several of his special pupils, and a few other Harvard

students who joined the expedition from general interest. Beside

these, there were several volunteer members, who were either

naturalists or had been attracted to the undertaking by their love

of nature and travel. Their object was the examination of the

eastern and northern shores of Lake Superior from Sault Ste. Marie

to Fort William, a region then little known to science or to

tourists. Agassiz taught along the road. At evening, around the

camp-fire, or when delayed by weather or untoward circumstances, he

would give to his companions short and informal lectures, it might

be on the forest about them, or on the erratic phenomena in the

immediate neighborhood,--on the terraces of the lake shore, or on

the fish of its waters. His lecture-room, in short, was everywhere;

his apparatus a traveling blackboard and a bit of chalk; while his

illustrations and specimens lay all around him, wherever the party

chanced to be.

To Agassiz himself the expedition was of the deepest interest.

Glacial phenomena had, as we have seen, met him at every turn since

his arrival in the United States, but nowhere had he found them in

greater distinctness than on the shores of Lake Superior. As the

evidence accumulated about him, he became more than ever satisfied

that the power which had modeled and grooved the rocks all over the

country, and clothed it with a sheet of loose material reaching to

the sea, must have been the same which had left like traces in

Europe. In a continent of wide plains and unbroken surfaces, and,

therefore, with few centres of glacial action, the phenomena were

more widely and uniformly scattered than in Europe. But their

special details, down to the closest minutiae, were the same, while

their definite circumscription and evenness of distribution forbade

the idea of currents or floods as the moving cause. Here, as

elsewhere, Agassiz recognized at once the comprehensive scope of

the phenomena. The whole history reconstructed itself in his mind,

to the time when a sheet of ice clothed the land, reaching the

Atlantic sea-board, as it now does the coast of Spitzbergen and the

Arctic shores.

He made also a careful survey of the local geology of Lake

Superior, and especially of the system of dykes, by the action of

which he found that its bed had been excavated, and the outline of

its shores determined. But perhaps the inhabitants of the lake

itself occupied him even more than its conformation or its

surrounding features. Not only for its own novelty and variety, but

for its bearing on the geographical distribution of animals, the

fauna of this great sheet of fresh water interested him deeply. On

this journey he saw at Niagara for the first time a living

gar-pike, the only representative among modern fishes of the fossil

type of Lepidosteus. From this type he had learned more perhaps

than from any other, of the relations between the past and the

present fishes. When a student of nineteen years of age, his first

sight of a stuffed skin of a gar-pike in the Museum of Carlsruhe

told him that it stood alone among living fishes. Its true alliance

with the Lepidosteus of the early geological ages became clear to

him only later in his study of the fossil fishes. He then detected

the reptilian character of the type, and saw that from the

articulation of the vertebrae the head must have moved more freely

on the trunk than that of any fish of our days. To his great

delight, when the first living specimen of the gar-pike, or modern

Lepidosteus, was brought to him, it moved its head to the right and

left and upward, as a Saurian does and as no other fish can.

The result of this expedition was a valuable collection of fishes

and a report upon the fauna and the geology of Lake Superior,

comprising the erratic phenomena. A narrative written by James

Elliot Cabot formed the introduction to the report, and it was also

accompanied by two or three shorter contributions on special

subjects from other members of the party. The volume was

illustrated by a number of plates exquisitely drawn and colored on

stone by A. Sonrel.

This was not Agassiz's first publication in America. His

"Principles of Zoology" (Agassiz and Gould) was published in 1848.

The book had a large sale, especially for schools. Edition followed

edition, but the sale of the first part was checked by the want of

the second, which was never printed. Agassiz was always swept along

so rapidly by the current of his own activity that he was sometimes

forced to leave behind him unfinished work. Before the time came

for the completion of the second part of the zoology, his own

knowledge had matured so much, that to be true to the facts, he

must have remodeled the whole of the first part, and for this he

never found the time. Apropos of these publications the following

letters are in place.

FROM SIR RODERICK MURCHISON.

BELGRAVE SQUARE, October 3, 1849.

. . .I thank you very sincerely for your most captivating general

work on the "Principles of Zoology." I am quite in love with it. I

was glad to find that you had arranged the nummulites with the

tertiary rocks, so that the broad generalization I attempted in my

last work on the Alps, Apennines, and Carpathians is completely

sustained zoologically, and you will not be sorry to see the

stratigraphical truth vindicated (versus E. de Beaumont and--). I

beseech you to look at my memoir, and especially at my reasoning

about the miocene and pliocene divisions of the Alps and Italy. It

seems to me manifest that the percentage system derived from marine

life can never be applied to tertiary TERRESTRIAL successions. . .

My friends have congratulated me much on this my last effort, and

as Lyell and others most interested in opposing me have been

forward in approval, I begin to hope that I am not yet quite done

up; and that unlike the Bishop of Oviedo, my last sermon "ne sent

pas de l'apoplexie." I have, nevertheless, been desperately out of

sorts and full of gout and liver and all kinds of irritation this

summer, which is the first for many a long year in which I have

been unable to take the field. The meeting at Birmingham, however,

revived me. Professor W. Rogers will have told you all about our

doings. Buckland is up to his neck in "sewage," and wishes to

change all underground London into a fossil cloaca of pseudo

coprolites. This does not quite suit the chemists charged with

sanitary responsibilities; for they fear the Dean will poison half

the population in preparing his choice manures! But in this as in

everything he undertakes there is a grand sweeping view.

When are we to meet again? And when are we to have a "stand-up

fight" on the erratics of the Alps? You will see by the abstract of

my memoir appended to my Alpine affair that I have taken the field

against the extension of the Jura! In a word, I do not believe that

great trunk glaciers ever filled the valleys of the Rhone, etc.

Perhaps you will be present at our next meeting of the British

Association at Edinburgh, August, 1850. Olim meminisse juvabit! and

then, my dear and valued and most enlightened friend, we may study

once more together the surface of my native rocks for "auld lang

syne.". . .

FROM CHARLES DARWIN.

DOWN, FARNBOROUGH, KENT, June 15 [1850, probably].

MY DEAR SIR,

I have seldom been more deeply gratified than by receiving your

most kind present of "Lake Superior." I had heard of it, and had

much wished to read it, but I confess it was the very great honor

of having in my possession a work with your autograph, as a

presentation copy, that has given me such lively and sincere

pleasure. I cordially thank you for it. I have begun to read it

with uncommon interest, which I see will increase as I go on.

The Cirripedia, which you and Dr. Gould were so good as to send me,

have proved of great service to me. The sessile species from

Massachusetts consist of five species. . .Of the genus Balanus, on

the shores of Britain, we have ONE species (B. perforata

Bruguiere), which you have not in the United States, in the same

way as you exclusively have B. eburneus. All the above species

attain a somewhat larger average size on the shores of the United

States than on those of Britain, but the specimens from the glacial

beds of Uddevalla, Scotland, and Canada, are larger even than those

of the United States.

Once again allow me to thank you with cordiality for the pleasure

you have given me.

Believe me, with the highest respect, your truly obliged,

C. DARWIN.

The following letter from Hugh Miller concerning Agassiz's

intention of introducing "The Footprints of the Creator" to the

American public by a slight memoir of Miller is of interest here.

It is to be regretted that with this exception no letters have been

found from him among Agassiz's papers, though he must have been in

frequent correspondence with him, and they had, beside their

scientific sympathy, a very cordial personal relation.

EDINBURGH, 2 STUART STREET, May 25, 1850.

DEAR SIR,

I was out of town when your kind letter reached here, and found

such an accumulation of employment on my return that it is only now

I find myself able to devote half an hour to the work of reply, and

to say how thoroughly sensible I am of the honor you propose doing

me. It never once crossed my mind when, in writing my little

volume, the "Footprints," I had such frequent occasion to refer to

my master, our great authority in ichthyic history, that he himself

would have associated his name with it on the other side of the

Atlantic, and referred in turn to its humble writer.

In the accompanying parcel I send you two of my volumes, which you

may not yet have seen, and in which you may find some materials for

your proposed introductory memoir. At all events they may furnish

you with amusement in a leisure hour. The bulkier of the two,

"Scenes and Legends," of which a new edition has just appeared, and

of which the first edition was published, after lying several years

beside me, in 1835, is the earliest of my works to which I attached

my name. It forms a sort of traditionary history of a district of

Scotland, about two hundred miles distant from the capital, in

which the character of the people has been scarce at all affected

by the cosmopolitanism which has been gradually modifying and

altering it in the larger towns; and as it has been frequently

remarked,--I know not with what degree of truth,--that there is a

closer resemblance between the Scotch and Swiss than between any

other two peoples of Europe, you may have some interest in

determining whether the features of your own country-folk are not

sometimes to be seen in those of mine, as exhibited in my legendary

history. Certainly both countries had for many ages nearly the same

sort of work to do; both had to maintain a long and ultimately

successful war of independence against nations greatly more

powerful than themselves; and as their hills produced little else

than the "soldier and his sword," both had to make a trade abroad

of that art of war which they were compelled in self-defense to

acquire at home. Even in the laws of some nations we find them

curiously enough associated together. In France, under the old

regime, the personal property of all strangers dying in the

country, SWISS AND SCOTS EXCEPTED, was forfeited to the king.

The other volume, "First Impressions of England and its People,"

contains some personal anecdotes and some geology. But the

necessary materials you will chiefly find in the article from the

"North British Review" which I also inclose. It is from the pen of

Sir David Brewster, with whom for the last ten years I have spent a

few very agreeable days every year at Christmas, under the roof of

a common friend,--one of the landed proprietors of Fifeshire. Sir

David's estimate of the writer is, I fear, greatly too high, but

his statement of facts regarding him is correct; and I think you

will find it quite full enough for the purposes of a brief memoir.

With his article I send you one of my own, written about six years

ago for the same periodical, as the subject is one in which, from

its connection with your master study,--the natural history of

fishes,--you may take more interest than most men. It embodies,

from observation, what may be regarded as THE NATURAL HISTORY OF

THE FISHERMAN, and describes some curious scenes and appearances

which I witnessed many years ago when engaged, during a truant

boyhood, in prosecuting the herring fishery as an amateur. Many of

my observations of natural phenomena date from this idle, and yet

not wholly wasted, period of my life.

With the volumes I send also a few casts of my less fragile

specimens of Asterolepis. Two of the number, those of the external

and internal surfaces of the creature's cranial buckler, are really

very curious combinations of plates, and when viewed in a slant

light have a decidedly sculpturesque and not ungraceful effect. I

have seen on our rustic tombstones worse representations of angels,

winged and robed, than that formed by the central plates of the

interior surface when the light is made to fall along their higher

protuberances, leaving the hollows in the shade. You see how truly

your prediction regarding the flatness of the creature's head is

substantiated by these casts; it is really not easy to know how,

placed on so flat a surface, the eyes could have been very

available save for star-gazing; but as nature makes no mistakes in

such matters, it is possible that the creature, like the

flatfishes, may have lived much at the bottom, and that most of the

seeing it had use for may have been seeing in an upward direction.

None of my other specimens of bucklers are so entire and in so good

a state of keeping as the two from which I have taken the casts,

but they are greatly larger. One specimen, nearly complete,

exhibits an area about four times as great as the largest of these

two, and I have fragments of others which must have belonged to

fish still more gigantic. The two other casts are of specimens of

gill covers, which in the Asterolepis, as in the sturgeon,

consisted each of a single plate. In both the exterior surface of

the buckler and of the operculum the tubercles are a good deal

enveloped in the stone, which is of a consistency too hard to be

removed without injuring what it overlies; but you will find them

in the smaller cast which accompanies the others, and which, as

shown by the thickness of the plate in the original, indicates

their size and form in a large individual, very characteristically

shown. So coral-like is their aspect, that if it was from such a

cast, not a fossil (which would, of course, exhibit the

peculiarities of the bone), that Lamarck founded his genus

Monticularia, I think his apology for the error might almost be

maintained as good. I am sorry I cannot venture on taking casts

from some of my other specimens; but they are exceedingly fragile,

and as they are still without duplicates I am afraid to hazard

them. Since publishing my little volume I have got several new

plates of Asterolepis,--a broad palatal plate, covered with

tubercles, considerably larger than those of the creature's

external surface,--a key-stone shaped plate, placed, when in situ,

in advance of the little plate between the eyes, which form the

head and face of the effigy in the centre of the buckler,--and a

side-plate, into which the condyloid processes of the lower jaw

were articulated, and which exhibited the processes on which these

hinged. There are besides some two or three plates more, whose

places I have still to find. The small cast, stained yellow, is

taken from an instructive specimen of the jaws of coccosteus, and

exhibits a peculiarity which I had long suspected and referred to

in the first edition of my volume on the Old Red Sandstone in

rather incautious language, but which a set of my specimens now

fully establishes. Each of the under jaws of the fish was furnished

with two groups of teeth: one group in the place where, in

quadrupeds, we usually find the molars; and another group in the

line of the symphyses. And how these both could have acted is a

problem which our anatomists here--many of whom have carefully

examined my specimen--seem unable, and in some degree, indeed,

afraid to solve.

I have written to the Messrs. Gould, Kendall & Lincoln to say that

the third edition of the "Footprints" differs from the first and

second only by the addition of a single note and an illustrative

diagram, both of which I have inclosed to them in my communication.

I anticipate much pleasure from the perusal of your work on Lake

Superior, when it comes to hand, which, as your publishers have

intrusted it to the care of a gentleman visiting this country,

will, I think, be soon. It is not often that a region so remote and

so little known as that which surrounds the great lake of America

is visited by a naturalist of the first class. From such a terra

incognita, at length unveiled to eyes so discerning, I anticipate

strange tidings.

I am, my dear sir, with respect and admiration, very truly yours,

HUGH MILLER.

In the spring of 1850 Agassiz married Elizabeth Cabot Cary,

daughter of Thomas Graves Cary, of Boston. This marriage confirmed

his resolve to remain, at least for the present, in the United

States. It connected him by the closest ties with a large family

circle, of which he was henceforth a beloved and honored member,

and made him the brother-in-law of one of his most intimate friends

in Cambridge, Professor C.C. Felton. Thus secure of favorable

conditions for the care and education of his children, he called

them to this country. His son (then a lad of fifteen years of age)

had joined him the previous summer. His daughters, younger by

several years than their brother, arrived the following autumn, and

home built itself up again around him.

The various foreign members of his household had already scattered.

One or two had returned to Europe, others had settled here in

permanent homes of their own. Among the latter were Professor Guyot

and M. de Pourtales, who remained, both as scientific colleagues

and personal friends, very near and dear to him all his life. "Papa

Christinat" had also withdrawn. While Agassiz was absent on a

lecturing tour, the kind old man, knowing well the opposition he

should meet, and wishing to save both himself and his friend the

pain of parting, stole away without warning and went to New

Orleans, where he had obtained a place as pastor. This was a great

disappointment to Agassiz, who had urged him to make his home with

him, a plan in which his wife and children cordially concurred, but

which did not approve itself to the judgment of his old friend. M.

Christinat afterward returned to Switzerland, where he ended his

days. He wrote constantly until his death, and was always kept

advised of everything that passed in the family at Cambridge. Of

the old household, Mr. Burkhardt alone remained a permanent member

of the new one.

CHAPTER 16.

1850-1852: AGE 43-45.

Proposition from Dr. Bache.

Exploration of Florida Reefs.

Letter to Humboldt concerning Work in America.

Appointment to Professorship of Medical College in Charleston, S.C.

Life at the South.

Views concerning Races of Men.

Prix Cuvier.

THE following letter from the Superintendent of the Coast Survey

determined for Agassiz the chief events of the winter of 1851.

FROM ALEXANDER DALLAS BACHE.

WEBB'S HILL, October 30, 1850.

MY DEAR FRIEND,

Would it be possible for you to devote six weeks or two months to

the examination of the Florida reefs and keys in connection with

their survey? It is extremely important to ascertain what they are

and how formed. One account treats them as growing corals, another

as masses of something resembling oolite, piled together,

barrier-wise. You see that this lies at the root of the progress of

the reef, so important to navigation, of the use to be made of it

in placing our signals, of the use as a foundation for

light-houses, and of many other questions practically important and

of high scientific interest. I would place a vessel at your

disposal during the time you were on the reef, say six weeks.

The changes at or near Cape Florida, from the Atlantic coast and

its siliceous sand, to the Florida coast and its coral sand, must

be curious. You will be free to move from one end of the reef to

the other, which will be, say one hundred and fifty miles. Motion

to eastward would be slow in the windy season, though favored by

the Gulf Stream as the winds are "trade." Whatever collections you

might make would be your own. I would only ask for the survey such

information and such specimens as would be valuable to its

operations, especially to its hydrography, and some report on these

matters. As this will, if your time and engagements permit, lead to

a business arrangement, I must, though reluctantly, enter into

that. I will put aside six hundred dollars for the two months,

leaving you to pay your own expenses; or, if you prefer it, will

pay all expenses of travel, including subsistence, to and from Key

West, and furnish vessel and subsistence while there, and four

hundred dollars.

What results would flow to science from your visit to that region!

You have spoken of the advantage of using our vessels when they

were engaged in their own work. Now I offer you a vessel the

motions of which you will control, and the assistance of the

officers and crew of which you will have. You shall be at no

expense for going and coming, or while there, and shall choose your

own time. . .

Agassiz accepted this proposal with delight, and at once made

arrangements to take with him a draughtsman and an assistant, in

order to give the expedition such a character as would make it

useful to science in general, as well as to the special objects of

the Coast Survey. It will be seen that Dr. Bache gladly concurred

in all these views.

FROM ALEXANDER DALLAS BACHE.

WASHINGTON, December 18, 1850.

MY DEAR FRIEND,

On the basis of our former communications I have been, as the time

served, raising a superstructure. I have arranged with Lieutenant

Commander Alden to send the schooner W.A. Graham, belonging to the

Coast Survey, under charge of an officer who will take an interest

in promoting the great objects in which you will be engaged, to Key

West, in time to meet you on your arrival in the Isabel of the

15th, from Charleston to Key West. The vessel will be placed at

your absolute disposal for four to six weeks, as you may find

desirable, doing just such things as you require, and going to such

places as you direct. If you desire more than a general direction,

I will give any specific ones which you may suggest. . .

I have requested that room be made in the cabin for you and for two

aids, as you desire to take a draughtsman with you; and in

reference to your enlarged plan of operating, of which I see the

advantage, I have examined the financial question, and propose to

add two hundred dollars to the six hundred in my letter of October

30th, to enable you to execute it. I would suggest that you stop a

day in Washington on your way to Charleston, to pick up the

topographical and geographical information which you desire, and to

have all matters of a formal kind arranged to suit your convenience

and wishes, which, I am sure, will all be promotive of the objects

in view from your visit to Florida. . .You say I shall smile AT

your plans,--instead of which, they have been smiled ON; now, there

is a point for you,--a true Saxon distinction.

If you succeed (and did you ever fail!?) in developing for our

Coast Survey the nature, structure, growth, and all that, of the

Florida reefs, you will have conferred upon the country a priceless

favor. . .

The Superintendent of the Coast Survey never had cause to regret

the carte-blanche he had thus given. A few weeks, with the

facilities so liberally afforded, gave Agassiz a clew to all the

phenomena he had been commissioned to examine, and enabled him to

explain the relation between the keys and the outer and inner

reefs, and the mud swamps, or more open channels, dividing them,

and to connect these again with the hummocks and everglades of the

main-land. It remains to be seen whether his theory will hold good,

that the whole or the greater part of the Florida peninsula has,

like its southern portion, been built up of concentric reefs. But

his explanation of the present reefs, their structure, laws of

growth, relations to each other and to the main-land, as well as to

the Gulf Stream and its prevailing currents, was of great practical

service to the Coast Survey. It was especially valuable in

determining how far the soil now building up from accumulations of

mud and coral debris was likely to remain for a long time shifting

and uncertain, and how far and in what localities it might be

relied upon as affording a stable foundation. When, at the meeting

of the American Association in the following spring, Agassiz gave

an account of his late exploration, Dr. Bache, who was present,

said that for the first time he understood the bearing of the whole

subject, though he had so long been trying to unravel it.

The following letter was written immediately after Agassiz's

return.

TO SIR CHARLES LYELL.

CAMBRIDGE, April 26, 1851.

. . .I have spent a large part of the winter in Florida, with a

view of studying the coral reefs. I have found that they constitute

a new class of reefs, distinct from those described by Darwin and

Dana under the name of fringing reefs, barrier reefs, and atolls. I

have lately read a paper upon that subject before the American

Academy, which I shall send you as soon as it is printed. The case

is this. There are several concentric reefs separated by deep

channels; the peninsula of Florida itself is a succession of such

reefs, the everglades being the filled-up channels, while the

hummocks were formerly little intervening islands, like the

mangrove islands in the present channels. But what is quite

remarkable, all these concentric reefs are upon one level, above

that of the sea, and there is no indication whatever of upheaval.

You will find some observations upon upheavals, etc., in Silliman,

by Tuomey; it is a great mistake, as I shall show. The Tortugas are

a real atoll, but formed without the remotest indication of

subsidence.

Of course this does not interfere in the least with the views of

Darwin, for the whole ground presents peculiar features. I wish you

would tell him something about this. One of the most remarkable

peculiarities of the rocks in the reefs of the Tortugas consists in

their composition; they are chiefly made up of CORALLINES,

limestone algae, and, to a small extent only, of real corals. . .

Agassiz's report to the Coast Survey upon the results of this first

investigation made by him upon the reefs of Florida was not

published in full at the time. The parts practically most important

to the Coast Survey were incorporated in their subsequent charts;

the more general scientific results, as touching the physical

history of the peninsula as a whole, appeared in various forms,

were embodied in Agassiz's lectures, and were printed some years

after in his volume entitled "Methods of Study." The original

report, with all the plates prepared for it, was published in the

"Memoirs of the Museum of Comparative Zoology," under the

supervision of Alexander Agassiz, after the death of his father. It

forms a quarto volume, containing some sixty pages of text, with

twenty-two plates, illustrative of corals and coral structure, and

a map of Southern Florida with its reefs and keys.

This expedition was also of great importance to Agassiz's

collections, and to the embryo museum in Cambridge. It laid the

foundation of a very complete collection of corals of all varieties

and in all stages of growth. All the specimens, from huge coral

heads and branching fans down to the most minute single corals,

were given up to him, the value of the whole being greatly enhanced

by the drawings taken on the spot from the living animals.

To this period belongs also the following fragment of a letter to

Humboldt.

TO ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT.

[Probably 1852,--date not given.]

. . .What a time has passed since my last letter! Had you not been

constantly in my thoughts, and your counsels always before me as my

guide, I should reproach myself for my silence. I hope my two

papers on the medusae, forwarded this year, have reached you, and

also one upon the classification of insects, as based upon their

development. I have devoted myself especially to the organization

of the invertebrate animals, and to the facts bearing upon the

perfecting of their classification. I have succeeded in tracing the

same identity of structure between the three classes of radiates,

and also between those of mollusks, as has already been recognized

in the vertebrates, and partially in the articulates. It is truly a

pleasure for me now to be able to demonstrate in my lectures the

insensible gradations existing between polyps, medusae, and

echinoderms, and to designate by the same name organs seemingly so

different. Especially has the minute examination of the thickness

of the test in echinoderms revealed to me unexpected relations

between the sea-urchin and the medusa. No one suspects, I fancy, at

this moment, that the solid envelope of the Scutellae and the

Clypeasters is traversed by a net-work of radiating tubes,

corresponding to those of the medusae, so well presented by

Ehrenberg in Aurelia aurita. If the Berlin zoologists will take the

trouble to file off the surface of the test of an Echinarachnius

parma, they will find a circular canal as large and as continuous

as that of the medusae. The aquiferous tubes specified above open

into this canal. But the same thing may be found under various

modifications in other genera of the family. Since I have succeeded

in injecting colored liquid into the beroids, for instance, and

keeping them alive with it circulating in their transparent mass, I

am able to show the identity of their zones of locomotive fringes

(combs), from which they take their name of Ctenophorae, with the

ambulacral (locomotive) apparatus of the echinoderms. Furnished

with these facts, it is not difficult to recognize true beroidal

forms in the embryos of sea-urchins and star-fishes, published by

Muller in his beautiful plates, and thus to trace the medusoid

origin of the echinoderms, as the polypoid origin of the medusae

has already been recognized. I do not here allude to their

primitive origin, but simply to the general fact that among

radiates the embryos of the higher classes represent, in miniature,

types of the lower classes, as, for instance, those of the

echinoderms resemble the medusae, those of the medusae the polyps.

Having passed the greater part of last winter in Florida, where I

was especially occupied in studying the coral reefs, I had the best

opportunity in the world for prosecuting my embryological

researches upon the stony corals. I detected relations among them

which now enable me to determine the classification of these

animals according to their mode of development with greater

completeness than ever before, and even to assign a superior or

inferior rank to their different types, agreeing with their

geological succession, as I have already done for the fishes. I am

on the road to the same results for the mollusks and the

articulates, and can even now say in general terms, that the most

ancient representatives of all the families belonging to these

great groups, strikingly recall the first phases in the embryonic

development of their successors in more recent formations, and even

that the embryos of comparatively recent families recall families

belonging to ancient epochs. You will find some allusion to these

results in my Lectures on Embryology, given in my "Lake Superior,"

of which I have twice sent you a copy, that it might reach you the

more surely; but these first impressions have assumed greater

coherence now, and I constantly find myself recurring to my fossils

for light upon the embryonic forms I am studying and vice versa,

consulting my embryological drawings in order to decipher the

fossils with greater certainty.

The proximity of the sea and the ease with which I can visit any

part of the coast within a range of some twenty degrees give me

inexhaustible resources for the whole year, which, as time goes on,

I turn more and more to the best account. On the other hand, the

abundance and admirable state of preservation of the fossils found

in our ancient deposits, as well as the regular succession of the

beds containing them, contribute admirable material for this kind

of comparative study. . .

In the summer of 1851 Agassiz was invited to a professorship at the

Medical College in Charleston, S.C. This was especially acceptable

to him, because it substituted a regular course of instruction to

students, for the disconnected lectures given to miscellaneous

audiences, in various parts of the country, by which he was obliged

to eke out his small salary and provide for his scientific

expenses. While more fatiguing than class-room work, these

scattered lectures had a less educational value, though, on the

other hand, they awakened a very wide-spread interest in the study

of nature. The strain of constant traveling for this purpose, the

more harassing because so unfavorable to his habits of continuous

work, had already told severely upon his health; and from this

point of view also the new professorship was attractive, as

promising a more quiet, though no less occupied, life. The lectures

were to be given during the three winter months, thus occupying the

interval between his autumn and spring courses at Cambridge.

He assumed his new duties at Charleston in December, 1851, and by

the kindness of his friend Mrs. Rutledge, who offered him the use

of her cottage for the purpose, he soon established a laboratory on

Sullivan's Island, where the two or three assistants he had brought

with him could work conveniently. The cottage stood within hearing

of the wash of the waves, at the head of the long, hard sand beach

which fringed the island shore for some three or four miles. There

could hardly be a more favorable position for a naturalist, and

there, in the midst of their specimens, Agassiz and his band of

workers might constantly be found. His studies here were of the

greater interest to him because they connected themselves with his

previous researches, not only upon the fishes, but also upon the

lower marine animals of the coast of New England and of the Florida

reefs; so that he had now a basis for comparison of the fauna

scattered along the whole Atlantic coast of the United States. The

following letter gives some idea of his work at this time.

TO PROFESSOR JAMES D. DANA.

CHARLESTON, January 26, 1852.

MY DEAR FRIEND,

You should at least know that I think of you often on these shores.

And how could I do otherwise when I daily find new small crustacea,

which remind me of the important work you are now preparing on that

subject.

Of course, of the larger ones there is nothing to be found after

Professor Gibbes has gone over the ground, but among the lower

orders there are a great many in store for a microscopic observer.

I have only to regret that I cannot apply myself more steadily. I

find my nervous system so over-excited that any continuous exertion

makes me feverish. So I go about as much as the weather allows, and

gather materials for better times.

Several interesting medusae have been already observed; among

others, the entire metamorphosis and alternate generation of a new

species of my genus tiaropsis. You will be pleased to know that

here, as well as at the North, tiaropsis is the medusa of a

campanularia. Mr. Clark, one of my assistants, has made very good

drawings of all its stages of growth, and of various other hydroid

medusae peculiar to this coast. Mr. Stimpson, another very

promising young naturalist, who has been connected with me for some

time in the same capacity, draws the crustacea and bryozoa, of

which there are also a good many new ones here. My son and my old

friend Burkhardt are also with me (upon Sullivan's Island), and

they look after the larger species, so that I shall probably have

greatly increased my information upon the fauna of the Atlantic

coast by the time I return to Cambridge.

In town, where I go three times a week to deliver lectures at the

Medical College (beside a course just now in the evening also

before a mixed audience), I have the rest of my family, so that

nothing would be wanting to my happiness if my health were only

better. . .What a pity that a man cannot work as much as he would

like; or at least accomplish what he aims at. But no doubt it is

best it should be so; there is no harm in being compelled by

natural necessities to limit our ambition,--on the contrary, the

better sides of our nature are thus not allowed to go to sleep.

However, I cannot but regret that I am unable at this time to trace

more extensively subjects for which I should have ample

opportunities here, as for instance the anatomy of the echinoderms,

and also the embryology of the lower animals in general. . .

This winter, notwithstanding the limitations imposed upon his work

by the state of his health, was a very happy one to Agassiz. As

mentioned in the above letter his wife and daughters had

accompanied him to Charleston, and were established there in

lodgings. Their holidays and occasional vacations were passed at

the house of Dr. John E. Holbrook (the "Hollow Tree"), an

exquisitely pretty and picturesque country place in the

neighborhood of Charleston. Here Agassiz had been received almost

as one of the family on his first visit to Charleston, shortly

after his arrival in the United States. Dr. Holbrook's name, as the

author of the "Herpetology of South Carolina," had long been

familiar to him, and he now found a congenial and affectionate

friend in the colleague and fellow-worker, whose personal

acquaintance he had been anxious to make. Dr. Holbrook's wife, a

direct descendant of John Rutledge of our revolutionary history,

not only shared her husband's intellectual life, but had herself

rare mental qualities, which had been developed by an unusually

complete and efficient education. The wide and various range of her

reading, the accuracy of her knowledge in matters of history and

literature, and the charm of her conversation, made her a

delightful companion. She exercised the most beneficent influence

upon her large circle of young people, and without any effort to

attract, she drew to herself whatever was most bright and clever in

the society about her. The "Hollow Tree," presided over by its

hospitable host and hostess was, therefore, the centre of a

stimulating and cultivated social intercourse, free from all gene

or formality. Here Agassiz and his family spent many happy days

during their southern sojourn of 1852. The woods were yellow with

jessamine, and the low, deep piazza was shut in by vines and roses;

the open windows and the soft air full of sweet, out-of-door

fragrance made one forget, spite of the wood fire on the hearth,

that it was winter by the calendar. The days, passed almost wholly

in the woods or on the veranda, closed with evenings spent not

infrequently in discussions upon the scientific ideas and theories

of the day, carried often beyond the region of demonstrated facts

into that of speculative thought. An ever-recurring topic was that

of the origin of the human race. It was Agassiz's declared belief

that man had sprung not from a common stock, but from various

centres, and that the original circumscription of these primordial

groups of the human family corresponded in a large and general way

with the distribution of animals and their combination into faunae.

* (* See "Sketch of the Natural Provinces of the Animal World and

their Relation to the Different Types of Man" included in Nott &

Gliddon's "Types of Mankind".) His special zoological studies were

too engrossing to allow him to follow this line of investigation

closely, but it was never absent from his view of the animal

kingdom as a whole. He valued extremely Mrs. Holbrook's thoughtful

sympathy, and as the following letter connects itself with the

winter evening talks by the "Hollow Tree" fireside, and was

suggested by them, it may be given here, though in date it is a

little in advance of the present chapter.

TO MRS. HOLBROOK.

CAMBRIDGE, July, 1852.

. . .I am again working at the human races, and have opened another

line of investigation in that direction. The method followed by

former investigators does not seem to me to have been altogether

the best, since there is so little agreement between them. The

difficulty has, no doubt, arisen on one side from the circumstance

that the inquirer sought for evidence of the unity of all races,

expecting the result to agree with the prevailing interpretation of

Genesis; and on the other from too zoological a point of view in

weighing the differences observed. Again, both have almost set

aside all evidence not directly derived from the examination of the

races themselves. It has occurred to me that as a preliminary

inquiry we ought to consider the propriety of applying to man the

same rules as to animals, examining the limits within which they

obtain, and paying due attention to all circumstances bearing upon

the differences observed among men, from whatever quarter in the

study of nature they may be gathered. What do the monkeys say to

this? or, rather, what have they to tell in reference to it? There

are among them as great, and, indeed, even greater, differences

than among men, for they are acknowledged to constitute different

genera, and are referred to many, indeed to more than a hundred,

species; but they are the nearest approach to the human family, and

we may at least derive some hints from them. How much mixture there

is among these species, if any, is not at all ascertained; indeed,

we have not the least information respecting their intercourse; but

one point is certain,--zoologists agree as little among themselves

respecting the limits of these species as they do respecting the

affinities of the races of men. What some consider as distinct

species, others consider as mere varieties, and these varieties or

species differ in particulars neither more constant nor more

important than those which distinguish the human races. The fact

that they are arranged in different genera, species, and varieties

does not lessen the value of the comparison; for the point in

question is just to know whether nations, races, and what have also

been called families of men, such as the Indo-Germanic, the

Semitic, etc., do not in reality correspond to the families,

genera, and species of monkeys. Now the first great subdivisions

among the true monkeys (excluding Makis and Arctopitheci) are

founded upon the form of the nose, those of the new world having a

broad partition between the nostrils, while those of the old world

have it narrow. How curious that this fact, which has been known to

naturalists for half a century, as presenting a leading feature

among monkeys, should have been overlooked in man, when, in

reality, the negroes and Australians differ in precisely the same

manner from the other races; they having a broad partition, and

nostrils opening sideways, like the monkeys of South America, while

the other types of the human family have a narrow partition and

nostrils opening downward, like the monkeys of Asia and Africa.

Again, the minor differences, such as the obliquity of the anterior

teeth, the thickness of the lips, the projection of the

cheek-bones, the position of the eyes, the characteristic hair, or

wool, afford as constant differences as those by which the

chimpanzees, orangs, and gibbons are separated into distinct

genera; and their respective species differ no more than do the

Greeks, Germans, and Arabs,--or the Chinese, Tartars, and Finns,

--or the New Zealanders and Malays, which are respectively referred

to the same race. The truth is, that the different SPECIES admitted

by some among the orangs are in reality RACES among monkeys, or

else the races among men are nothing more than what are called

species among certain monkeys. . .Listen for a moment to the

following facts, and when you read this place a map of the world

before you. Upon a narrow strip of land along the Gulf of Guinea,

from Cape Palmas to the Gaboon, live two so-called species of

chimpanzee; upon the islands of Sumatra and Borneo live three or

four orangs; upon the shores of the Gulf of Bengal, including the

neighborhood of Calcutta, Burmah, Malacca, Sumatra, Borneo, and

Java together, ten or eleven species of gibbons, all of which are

the nearest relatives to the human family, some being as large as

certain races of men; altogether, fifteen species of anthropoid

monkeys playing their part in the animal population of the world

upon an area not equaling by any means the surface of Europe. Some

of these species are limited to Borneo, others to Sumatra, others

to Java alone, others to the peninsula of Malacca; that is to say

to tracts of land similar in extent to Spain, France, Italy, and

even to Ireland; distinct animals, considered by most naturalists

as distinct species, approaching man most closely in structural

eminence and size, limited to areas not larger than Spain or Italy.

Why, then, should not the primitive theatre of a nation of men have

been circumscribed within similar boundaries, and from the

beginning have been as independent as the chimpanzee of Guinea, or

the orangs of Borneo and Sumatra? Of course, the superior powers of

man have enabled him to undertake migrations, but how limited are

these, and how slight the traces they have left behind them. . .

Unfortunately for natural history, history so-called has recorded

more faithfully the doings of handfuls of adventurers than the real

history of the primitive nations with whom the migrating tribes

came into contact. But I hope it will yet be possible to dive under

these waves of migration, to remove, as it were, the trace of their

passage, and to read the true history of the past inhabitants of

the different parts of the world, when it will be found, if all

analogies are not deceptive, that every country equaling in extent

those within the limits of which distinct nationalities are known

to have played their part in history, has had its distinct

aborigines, the character of which it is now the duty of

naturalists to restore, if it be not too late, in the same manner

as paleontologists restore fossil remains. I have already made some

attempts, by studying ancient geography, and I hope the task may

yet be accomplished. . .Look, for instance, at Spain. The Iberians

are known as the first inhabitants, never extending much beyond the

Pyrenees to the Garonne, and along the gulfs of Lyons and Genoa. As

early as during the period of Phoenician prosperity they raised

wool from their native sheep, derived from the Mouflon, still found

wild in Spain, Corsica, and Sardinia; they had a peculiar breed of

horses, to this day differing from all other horses in the world.

Is this not better evidence of their independent origin, than is

the fancied lineage with the Indo-Germanic family of their Oriental

descent? For we must not forget, in connection with this, that the

Basque language was once the language of all Spain, that which the

Iberian spoke, and which has no direct relation to Sanskrit.

I have alluded but slightly to the negro race, and not at all to

the Indians. I would only add with reference to these that I begin

to perceive the possibility of distinguishing different centres of

growth in these two continents. If we leave out of consideration

fancied migrations, what connection can be traced, for instance,

between the Eskimos, along the whole northern districts of this

continent, and the Indians of the United States, those of Mexico,

those of Peru, and those of Brazil? Is there any real connection

between the coast tribes of the northwest coast, the mound

builders, the Aztec civilization, the Inca, and the Gueranis? It

seems to me no more than between the Assyrian and Egyptian

civilization. And as to negroes, there is, perhaps, a still greater

difference between those of Senegal, of Guinea, and the Caffres and

Hottentots, when compared with the Gallahs and Mandingoes. But

where is the time to be taken for the necessary investigations

involved in these inquiries? Pray write to me soon what you say to

all this, and believe me always your true friend,

L. AGASSIZ.

In the spring of 1852, while still in Charleston, Agassiz heard

that the Prix Cuvier, now given for the first time, was awarded to

him for the "Poissons Fossiles." This gratified him the more

because the work had been so directly bequeathed to him by Cuvier

himself. To his mother, through whom he received the news in

advance of the official papers, it also gave great pleasure. "Your

fossil fishes," she says, "which have cost you so much anxiety, so

much toil, so many sacrifices, have now been estimated at their

true value by the most eminent judges. . .This has given me such

happiness, dear Louis, that the tears are in my eyes as I write it

to you." She had followed the difficulties of his task too closely

not to share also its success.

CHAPTER 17.

1852-1855: AGE 45-48.

Return to Cambridge.

Anxiety about Collections.

Purchase of Collections.

Second Winter in Charleston.

Illness.

Letter to James D. Dana concerning Geographical Distribution

and Geological Succession of Animals.

Resignation of Charleston Professorship.

Propositions from Zurich.

Letter to Oswald Heer.

Decision to remain in Cambridge.

Letters to James D. Dana, S.S. Haldeman, and Others respecting

Collections illustrative of the Distribution of Fishes, Shells,

etc., in our Rivers.

Establishment of School for Girls.

Agassiz returned from Charleston to Cambridge in the early spring,

pausing in Washington to deliver a course of lectures before the

Smithsonian Institution. By this time he had become intimate with

Professor Henry, at whose hospitable house he and his family were

staying during their visit at Washington. He had the warmest

sympathy not only with Professor Henry's scientific work and

character, but also with his views regarding the Smithsonian

Institution, of which he had become the Superintendent shortly

after Agassiz arrived in this country. Agassiz himself was soon

appointed one of the Regents of the Institution and remained upon

the Board until his death.

Agassiz now began to feel an increased anxiety about his

collections. During the six years of his stay in the United States

he had explored the whole Atlantic sea-board as well as the lake

and river system of the Eastern and Middle States, and had amassed

such materials in natural history as already gave his collections,

in certain departments at least, a marked importance. In the lower

animals, and as illustrating the embryology of the marine

invertebrates, they were especially valuable. It had long been a

favorite idea with him to build up an embryological department in

his prospective museum; the more so because such a provision on any

large scale had never been included in the plan of the great

zoological institutions, and he believed it would have a direct and

powerful influence on the progress of modern science. The

collections now in his possession included ample means for this

kind of research, beside a fair representation of almost all

classes of the animal kingdom. Packed together, however, in the

narrowest quarters, they were hardly within his own reach, much

less could they be made available for others. His own resources

were strained to the utmost, merely to save these precious

materials from destruction. It is true that in 1850 the sum of four

hundred dollars, to be renewed annually, was allowed him by the

University for their preservation, and a barrack-like wooden

building on the college grounds, far preferable to the bath-house

by the river, was provided for their storage. But the cost of

keeping them was counted by thousands, not by hundreds, and the

greater part of what Agassiz could make by his lectures outside of

Cambridge was swallowed up in this way. It was, perhaps, the

knowledge of this which induced certain friends, interested in him

and in science, to subscribe twelve thousand dollars for the

purchase of his collections, to be thus permanently secured to

Cambridge. This gave him back, in part, the sum he had already

spent upon them, and which he was more than ready to spend again in

their maintenance and increase.

The next year showed that his over-burdened life was beginning to

tell upon his health. Scarcely had he arrived in Charleston and

begun his course at the Medical College when he was attacked by a

violent fever, and his life was in danger for many days.

Fortunately for him his illness occurred at the "Hollow Tree,"

where he was passing the Christmas holidays. Dr. and Mrs. Holbrook

were like a brother and sister to him, and nothing could exceed the

kindness he received under their roof. One young friend who had

been his pupil, and to whom he was much attached, Dr. St. Julian

Ravenel, was constantly at his bedside. His care was invaluable,

for he combined the qualities of physician and nurse. Under such

watchful tending, Agassiz could hardly fail to mend if cure were

humanly possible. The solicitude of these nearer friends seemed to

be shared by the whole community, and his recovery gave general

relief. He was able to resume his lectures toward the end of

February. Spite of the languor of convalescence his elastic mind

was at once ready for work, as may be seen by the following extract

from one of his first letters.

TO JAMES D. DANA.

SULLIVAN'S ISLAND, CHARLESTON, February 16, 1853.

. . .It seems, indeed, to me as if in the study of the geographical

distribution of animals the present condition of the animal kingdom

was too exclusively taken into consideration. Whenever it can be

done, and I hope before long it may be done for all classes, it

will be desirable to take into account the relations of the living

to the fossil species. Since you are as fully satisfied as I am

that the location of animals, with all their peculiarities, is not

the result of physical influences, but lies within the plans and

intentions of the Creator, it must be obvious that the successive

introduction of all the diversity of forms which have existed from

the first appearance of any given division of the animal kingdom up

to the present creation, must have reference to the location of

those now in existence. For instance, if it be true among mammalia

that the highest types, such as quadrumana, are essentially

tropical, may it not be that the prevailing distribution of the

inferior pachyderms within the same geographical limits is owing to

the circumstance that their type was introduced upon earth during a

warmer period in the history of our globe, and that their present

location is in accordance with that fact, rather than related to

their degree of organization? The pentacrinites, the lowest of the

echinoderms, have only one living representative in tropical

America, where we find at the same time the highest and largest

spatangi and holothuridae. Is this not quite a parallel case with

the monkeys and pachyderms? for once crinoids were the only

representatives of the class of echinoderms. May we not say the

same of crocodiles when compared with the ancient gigantic

saurians? or are the crocodiles, as an order, distinct from the

other saurians, and really higher than the turtles? Innumerable

questions of this kind, of great importance for zoology, are

suggested at every step, as soon as we compare the present

distribution of animals with that of the inhabitants of former

geological periods. Among crustacea, it is very remarkable that

trilobites and limulus-like forms are the only representatives of

the class during the paleozoic ages; that macrourans prevailed in

the same manner during the secondary period; and that brachyurans

make their appearance only in the tertiary period. Do you discover

in your results any connection between such facts and the present

distribution of crustacea? There is certainly one feature in their

classification which must appear very striking,--that, taken on a

large scale, the organic rank of these animals agrees in the main

with their order of succession in geological times; and this fact

is of no small importance when it is found that the same

correspondence between rank and succession obtains through all

classes of the animal kingdom, and that similar features are

displayed in the embryonic growth of all types so far as now known.

But I feel my head is growing dull, and I will stop here. Let me

conclude by congratulating you on having completed your great work

on crustacea. . .

Agassiz returned to the North in the spring of 1853 by way of the

Mississippi, stopping to lecture at Mobile, New Orleans, and St.

Louis. On leaving Charleston he proffered his resignation with deep

regret, for, beside the close personal ties he had formed, he was

attached to the place, the people, and to his work there. He had

hoped to establish a permanent station for sustained observations

in South Carolina, and thus to carry on a series of researches

which, taken in connection with his studies on the New England

coast and its vicinity, and on the Florida reefs and shores, would

afford a wide field of comparison. This was not to be, however. The

Medical College refused, indeed, to accept his resignation,

granting him, at the same time, a year of absence. But it soon

became evident that his health was seriously shaken, and that he

needed the tonic of the northern winter. He was, indeed, never

afterward as strong as he had been before this illness.

The winter of 1854 was passed in Cambridge with such quiet and rest

as the conditions of his life would allow. In May of that year he

received an invitation to the recently established University of

Zurich, in Switzerland. His acceptance was urged upon the ground of

patriotism as well as on that of a liberal endowment both for the

professor, and for the museum of which he was to have charge. The

offer was tempting, but Agassiz was in love (the word is not too

strong) with the work he had undertaken and the hopes he had formed

in America. He believed that by his own efforts, combined with the

enthusiasm for science which he had aroused and constantly strove

to keep alive and foster in the community, he should at last

succeed in founding a museum after his own heart in the United

States,--a museum which should not be a mere accumulation, however

vast or extensive, of objects of natural history, but should have a

well-combined and clearly expressed educational value. As we shall

see, neither the associations of his early life nor the most

tempting scientific prizes in the gift of the old world could

divert him from this settled purpose. The proposition from Zurich

was not official, but came through a friend and colleague, for whom

he had the deepest sympathy and admiration,--Oswald Heer. To work

in his immediate neighborhood would have been in itself a

temptation.

TO PROFESSOR OSWALD HEER.

CAMBRIDGE, January 9, 1855.

MY HONORED FRIEND,

How shall I make you understand why your kind letter, though it

reached me some months ago, has remained till now unanswered. It

concerns a decision of vital importance to my whole life, and in

such a case one must not decide hastily, nor even with too

exclusive regard for one's own preference in the matter. You cannot

doubt that the thought of joining an institution of my native

country, and thus helping to stimulate scientific progress in the

land of my birth, my home, and my early friends, appeals to all I

hold dear and honorable in life. On the other side I have now been

eight years in America, have learned to understand the advantages

of my position here, and have begun undertakings which are not yet

brought to a conclusion. I am aware also how wide an influence I

already exert upon this land of the future,--an influence which

gains in extent and intensity with every year,--so that it becomes

very difficult for me to discern clearly where I can be most useful

to science. Among my privileges I must not overlook that of passing

much of my time on the immediate sea-shore, where the resources for

the zoologist and embryologist are inexhaustible. I have now a

house distant only a few steps from an admirable locality for these

studies, and can therefore pursue them uninterruptedly throughout

the whole year, instead of being limited, like most naturalists, to

the short summer vacations. It is true I miss the larger museums,

libraries, etc., as well as the stimulus to be derived from

association with a number of like-minded co-workers, all striving

toward the same end. With every year, however, the number of able

and influential investigators increases here, and among them are

some who might justly claim a prominent place anywhere. . .

Neither are means for publication lacking. The larger treatises

with costly illustrations appear in the Smithsonian Contributions,

in the Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, in those

of the Academy of Natural Sciences, and in the Memoirs of the

American Academy; while the smaller communications find a place in

Silliman's Journal, in the Journal of the Boston Natural History

Society, and in the proceedings of other scientific societies.

Museums also are already founded;. . .and beside these there are a

number of private collections in single departments of zoology. . .

Better than all this, however, is the lively and general interest

taken in the exploration of the country itself. Every scientific

expedition sent out by the government to the interior, or to the

Western States of Oregon and California, is accompanied by a

scientific commission,--zoologists, geologists, and botanists. By

this means magnificent collections, awaiting only able

investigators to work them up, have been brought together. Indeed,

I do not believe that as many new things are accumulated anywhere

as just here, and it is my hope to contribute hereafter to the more

critical and careful examination of these treasures. Under these

circumstances I have asked myself for months past how I ought to

decide; not what were my inclinations, for that is not the

question,--but what was my duty toward science? After the most

careful consideration I am no longer in doubt, and though it

grieves me to do so, I write to beg that you will withdraw from any

action which might bring me a direct call to the professorship in

Zurich. I have decided to remain here for an indefinite time, under

the conviction that I shall exert a more advantageous and more

extensive influence on the progress of science in this country than

in Europe.

I regret that I cannot accept your offer of the Oeningen fossils.

In the last two years I have spent more than 20,000 francs on my

collection, and must not incur any farther expense of that kind at

present. As soon, however, as I have new means at my command such a

collection would be most welcome, and should it remain in your

hands I may be very glad to take it. Neither can I make any

exchange of duplicates just now, as I have not yet been able to

sort my collections and set aside the specimens which may be

considered only as materials for exchange. Can you procure for me

Glarus fishes in any considerable number? I should like to purchase

them for my collection, and do not care for single specimens of

every species, but would prefer whole suites that I may revise my

former identifications in the light of a larger insight.

Remember me kindly to all my Zurich friends, and especially to

Arnold Escher. . .

Agassiz's increasing and at last wholly unmanageable correspondence

attests the general sympathy for and cooperation with his

scientific aims in the United States. In 1853, for instance, he had

issued a circular, asking for collections of fishes from various

fresh-water systems of the United States, in order that he might

obtain certain data respecting the laws of their distribution and

localization. To this he had hundreds of answers coming from all

parts of the country, many of them very shrewd and observing,

giving facts respecting the habits of fishes, as well as concerning

their habitat, and offering aid in the general object. Nor were

these empty promises. A great number and variety of collections,

now making part of the ichthyological treasures of the Museum at

Cambridge, were forwarded to him in answer to this appeal. Indeed,

he now began to reap, in a new form, the harvest of his wandering

lecture tours. In this part of his American experience he had come

into contact with all classes of people, and had found some of his

most intelligent and sympathetic listeners in the working class.

Now that he needed their assistance he often found his co-laborers

among farmers, stock-raisers, sea-faring men, fishermen, and

sailors. Many a New England captain, when he started on a cruise,

had on board collecting cans, furnished by Agassiz, to be filled in

distant ports or nearer home, as the case might be, and returned to

the Museum at Cambridge. One or two letters, written to scientific

friends at the time the above-mentioned circular was issued, will

give an idea of the way in which Agassiz laid out such

investigations.

TO JAMES D. DANA.

CAMBRIDGE, July 8, 1853.

. . .I have been lately devising some method of learning how far

animals are truly autochthones, and how far they have extended

their primitive boundaries. I will attempt to test that question

with Long Island, the largest of all the islands along our coast.

For this purpose I will for the present limit myself to the

fresh-water fishes and shells, and for the sake of comparison I

will try to collect carefully all the species living in the rivers

of Connecticut, New York, and New Jersey, and see whether they are

identical with those of the island. Whatever may come out of such

an investigation it will, at all events, furnish interesting data

upon the local distribution of the species. . .I am almost

confident that it will lead to something interesting, for there is

one feature of importance in the case; the present surface of Long

Island is not older than the drift period; all its inhabitants

must, therefore, have been introduced since that time. I shall see

that I obtain similar collections from the upper course of the

Connecticut, so as to ascertain whether there, as in the

Mississippi, the species differ at different heights of the river

basin. . .

TO PROFESSOR S.S. HALDEMAN, COLUMBIA, PENNSYLVANIA.

CAMBRIDGE, July 9, 1853.

. . .While ascending the great Mississippi last spring I was struck

with the remarkable fact that the fishes differ essentially in the

different parts of that long water-course,--a fact I had already

noticed in the Rhine, Rhone, and Danube, though there the

difference arises chiefly from the occurrence, in the higher Alpine

regions, of representatives of the trout family which are not found

in the main river course. In the Mississippi, however, the case is

otherwise and very striking, inasmuch as we find here, at separate

latitudes, distinct species of the same genera, somewhat like the

differences observed in distinct water-basins; and yet the river is

ever flowing on past these animals, which remain, as it were,

spell-bound to the regions most genial to them. The question at

once arises, do our smaller rivers present similar differences? I

have already taken steps to obtain complete collections of fishes,

shells, and crayfishes from various stations on the Connecticut and

the Hudson, and their tributaries; and I should be very happy if I

could include the Susquehanna, Delaware, and Ohio in my

comparisons. My object in writing now is to inquire whether you

could assist me in making separate collections, as complete as

possible, of all these animals from the north and west branches of

the Susquehanna, from the main river either at Harrisburg or

Columbia, and from the Juniata, also from the Schuylkill, Lehigh,

and Delaware, and from the Allegheny and Monongahela. I have Swiss

friends in the State of New York who have promised me to collect

the fishes from the head-waters of the Delaware and Susquehanna

within the limits of the State of New York. I cannot, of course,

expect you to survey your State for me, but among your acquaintance

in various parts of your State are there not those who, with proper

directions, could do the work for me? I would, of course, gladly

repay all their expenses. The subject seems to me so important as

to justify any effort in that direction. Little may be added to the

knowledge of the fishes themselves, for I suppose most of the

species have been described either by De Kay, Kirtland, or Storer;

but a careful study of their special geographical distribution may

furnish results as important to zoology as the knowledge of the

species themselves. If you cannot write yourself, will you give me

the names of such persons as might be persuaded to aid in the

matter. I know from your own observations in former times that you

have already collected similar facts for the Unios, so that you

will at once understand and appreciate my object. . .

He writes in the same strain and for the same object to Professor

Yandell, of Kentucky, adding: "In this respect the State of

Kentucky is one of the most important of the Union, not only on

account of the many rivers which pass through its territory, but

also because it is one of the few States the fishes of which have

been described by former observers, especially by Rafinesque in his

"Ichthyologia Ohioensis," so that a special knowledge of all his

original types is a matter of primary importance for any one who

would compare the fishes of the different rivers of the West. . .Do

you know whether there is anything left of Rafinesque's collection

of fishes in Lexington, and if so, whether the specimens are

labeled, as it would be very important to identify his species from

his own collection and his own labels? I never regretted more than

now that circumstances have not yet allowed me to visit your State

and make a stay in Louisville."

In 1854 Agassiz moved to a larger house, built for him by the

college. Though very simple, it was on a liberal scale with respect

to space; partly in order to accommodate his library, consisting of

several thousand volumes, now for the first time collected and

arranged in one room. He became very fond of this Cambridge home,

where, with few absences, he spent the remainder of his life. The

architect, Mr. Henry Greenough, was his personal friend, and from

the beginning the house adapted itself with a kindly readiness to

whatever plans developed under its roof. As will be seen, these

were not few, and were sometimes of considerable moment. For his

work also the house was extremely convenient. His habits in this

respect were, however, singularly independent of place and

circumstance. Unlike most studious men, he had no fixed spot in the

house for writing. Although the library, with the usual outfit of

well-filled shelves, maps, large tables, etc., held his materials,

he brought what he needed for the evening by preference to the

drawing-room, and there, with his paper on his knee, and his books

for reference on a chair beside him, he wrote and read as busily as

if he were quite alone. Sometimes when dancing and music were going

on among the young people of the family and their guests, he drew a

little table into the corner of the room, and continued his

occupations as undisturbed and engrossed as if he had been in

complete solitude,--only looking up from time to time with a

pleased smile or an apt remark, which showed that he did not lose

but rather enjoyed what was going on about him.

His children's friends were his friends. As his daughters grew up,

he had the habit of inviting their more intimate companions to his

library for an afternoon weekly. On these occasions there was

always some subject connected with the study of nature under

discussion, but the talk was so easy and so fully illustrated that

it did not seem like a lesson. It is pleasant to remember that in

later years Mr. Ralph Waldo Emerson revived this custom for his own

daughters; and their friends (being, indeed, with few changes, the

same set of young people as had formerly met in Agassiz's library)

used to meet in Mr. Emerson's study at Concord for a similar

object. He talked to them of poetry and literature and philosophy

as Agassiz had talked to them of nature. Those were golden days,

not to be forgotten by any who shared their happy privilege.

In the winter of 1855 Agassiz endeavored to resume his public

lectures as a means of increasing his resources. He was again,

however, much exhausted when spring came, and it seemed necessary

to seek some other means of support, for without considering

scientific expenses, his salary of fifteen hundred dollars did not

suffice for the maintenance of his family. Under these

circumstances it occurred to his wife and his two older children,

now of an age to assist her in such a scheme, that a school for

young ladies might be established in the upper part of the new and

larger house. By the removal of one or two partitions, ample room

could be obtained for the accommodation of a sufficient number of

pupils, and if successful such a school would perhaps make good in

a pecuniary sense the lecturing tours which were not only a great

fatigue to Agassiz, but an interruption also to all consecutive

scientific work. In consultation with friends these plans were

partly matured before they were confided to Agassiz himself. When

the domestic conspirators revealed their plot, his surprise and

pleasure knew no bounds. The first idea had been simply to

establish a private school on the usual plan, only referring to his

greater experience for advice and direction in its general

organization. But he claimed at once an active share in the work.

Under his inspiring influence the outline enlarged, and when the

circular announcing the school was issued, it appeared under his

name, and contained these words in addition to the programme of

studies: "I shall myself superintend the methods of instruction and

tuition, and while maintaining that regularity and precision in the

studies so important to mental training shall endeavor to prevent

the necessary discipline from falling into a lifeless routine,

alike deadening to the spirit of teacher and pupil. It is farther

my intention to take the immediate charge of the instruction in

Physical Geography, Natural History, and Botany, giving a lecture

daily, Saturdays excepted, on one or other of these subjects,

illustrated by specimens, models, maps, and drawings."

In order not to interrupt the course of the narrative, the history

of this undertaking in its sequence and general bearing on his life

and work may be completed here in a few words. This school secured

to him many happy and comparatively tranquil years. It enabled him

to meet both domestic and scientific expenses, and to pay the heavy

debt he had brought from Europe as the penalty of his "Fossil

Fishes" and his investigations on the glaciers. When the school

closed after eight years he was again a free man. With an increased

salary from the college, and with such provision for the Museum

(thanks to the generosity of the State and of individuals) as

rendered it in a great degree independent, he was never again

involved in the pecuniary anxieties of his earlier career. The

occupation of teaching was so congenial to him that his part in the

instruction of the school did not at any time weigh heavily upon

him. He never had an audience more responsive and more eager to

learn than the sixty or seventy girls who gathered every day at the

close of the morning to hear his daily lecture; nor did he ever

give to any audience lectures more carefully prepared, more

comprehensive in their range of subjects, more lofty in their tone

of thought. As a teacher he always discriminated between the

special student, and the one to whom he cared to impart only such a

knowledge of the facts of nature, as would make the world at least

partially intelligible to him. To a school of young girls he did

not think of teaching technical science, and yet the subjects of

his lectures comprised very abstruse and comprehensive questions.

It was the simplicity and clearness of his method which made them

so interesting to his young listeners. "What I wish for you," he

would say, "is a culture that is alive, active, susceptible of

farther development. Do not think that I care to teach you this or

the other special science. My instruction is only intended to show

you the thoughts in nature which science reveals, and the facts I

give you are useful only, or chiefly, for this object."

Running over the titles of his courses during several consecutive

years of this school instruction they read: Physical Geography and

Paleontology; Zoology; Botany; Coral Reefs; Glaciers; Structure and

Formation of Mountains; Geographical Distribution of Animals;

Geological Succession of Animals; Growth and Development of

Animals; Philosophy of Nature, etc. With the help of drawings,

maps, bas-reliefs, specimens, and countless illustrations on the

blackboard, these subjects were made clear to the pupils, and the

lecture hour was anticipated as the brightest of the whole morning.

It soon became a habit with friends and neighbors, and especially

with the mothers of the scholars, to drop in for the lectures, and

thus the school audience was increased by a small circle of older

listeners. The corps of teachers was also gradually enlarged. The

neighborhood of the university was a great advantage in this

respect, and Agassiz had the cooperation not only of his

brother-in-law, Professor Felton, but of others among his

colleagues, who took classes in special departments, or gave

lectures in history and literature.

This school opened in 1855 and closed in 1863. The civil war then

engrossed all thoughts, and interfered somewhat also with the

success of private undertakings. Partly on this account, partly

also because it had ceased to be a pecuniary necessity, it seemed

wise to give up the school at this time. The friendly relations

formed there did not, however, cease with it. For years afterward

on the last Thursday of June (the day of the annual closing of the

school) a meeting of the old pupils was held at the Museum, which

did not exist when the school began, but was fully established

before its close. There Agassiz showed them the progress of his

scientific work, told them of his future plans for the institution,

and closed with a lecture such as he used to give them in their

school-days. The last of these meetings took place in 1873, the

last year of his own life. The memory of it is connected with a

gift to the Museum of four thousand and fifty dollars from a number

of the scholars, now no longer girls, but women with their own

cares and responsibilities. Hearing that there was especial need of

means for the care of the more recent collections, they had

subscribed this sum among themselves to express their affection for

their old teacher, as well as their interest in his work, and in

the institution he had founded. His letter of acknowledgment to the

one among them who had acted as their treasurer makes a fitting

close to this chapter.

. . .Hardly anything in my life has touched me more deeply than the

gift I received this week from my school-girls. From no source in

the world could sympathy be more genial to me. The money I shall

appropriate to a long-cherished scheme of mine, a special work in

the Museum which must be exclusively my own,--the arrangement of a

special collection illustrating in a nutshell, as it were, all the

relations existing among animals,--which I have deferred because

other things were more pressing, and our means have been

insufficient. The feeling that you are all working with me will be

even more cheering than the material help, much needed as that is.

I wish I could write to each individually. I shall try to find some

means of expressing my thanks more widely. Meantime I write to you

as treasurer, and beg you, as far as you can do so without too much

trouble, to express my gratitude to others. Will you also say to

those whom you chance to meet that I shall be at the Museum on the

last Thursday of June, at half-past eleven o'clock. I shall be

delighted to see all to whom it is convenient to come. The Museum

has grown not only in magnitude, but in scientific significance,

and I like from time to time to give you an account of its

progress, and of my own work and aims. How much thought and care

and effort this kind plan of yours must have involved, scattered as

you all are! It cannot have been easy to collect the names and

addresses of all those whose signatures it was delightful to me to

see again. Words seem to me very poor, but you will accept for

yourself and your school-mates the warm thanks and affectionate

regards of your old friend and teacher.

L.R. AGASSIZ.

CHAPTER 18.

1855-1860: AGE 48-53.

"Contributions to Natural History of the United States."

Remarkable Subscription.

Review of the Work.

Its Reception in Europe and America.

Letters from Humboldt and Owen concerning it.

Birthday.

Longfellow's Verses.

Laboratory at Nahant.

Invitation to the Museum of Natural History in Paris.

Founding of Museum of Comparative Zoology in Cambridge.

Summer Vacation in Europe.

A few months earlier than the school circular Agassiz issued

another prospectus, which had an even more important bearing upon

his future work. This was the prospectus for his "Contributions to

the Natural History of the United States." It was originally

planned in ten volumes, every volume to be, however, absolutely

independent, so that the completeness of each part should not be

impaired by any possible interruption of the sequence. The mass of

original material accumulated upon his hands ever since his arrival

in America made such a publication almost imperative, but the

costliness of a large illustrated work deterred him. The "Poissons

Fossiles" had shown him the peril of entering upon such an

enterprise without capital. Perhaps he would never have dared to

undertake it but for a friendly suggestion which opened a way out

of his perplexities. Mr. Francis C. Gray, of Boston, who felt not

only the interest of a personal friend in the matter, but also that

of one who was himself a lover of letters and science, proposed an

appeal to the public spirit of the country in behalf of a work

devoted entirely to the Natural History of the United States. Mr.

Gray assumed the direction of the business details, set the

subscription afloat, stimulated its success by his own liberal

contributions, by letters, by private and public appeals. The

result far exceeded the most sanguine expectations of those

interested in its success. Indeed, considering the purely

scientific character of the work, the number of subscribers for it

was extraordinary, and showed again the hold Agassiz had taken upon

the minds and affections of the people in general. The contributors

were by no means confined to Boston and Cambridge, although the

Massachusetts list was naturally the largest, nor were they found

exclusively among literary and scientific circles. On the contrary,

the subscription list, to the astonishment of the publishers, was

increased daily by unsolicited names, sent in from all sections of

the country, and from various grades of life and occupation. In

reference to the character of this subscription Agassiz says in his

Preface: "I must beg my European readers to remember that this work

is written in America, and more especially for Americans; and that

the community to which it is particularly addressed has very

different wants from those of the reading public in Europe. There

is not a class of learned men here distinct from the other

cultivated members of the community. On the contrary, so general is

the desire for knowledge, that I expect to see my book read by

operatives, by fishermen, by farmers, quite as extensively as by

the students in our colleges or by the learned professions, and it

is but proper that I should endeavor to make myself understood by

all." If Agassiz, perhaps, overestimated in this statement the

appreciation of the reading public in the United States for pure

scientific research, it was because the number and variety of his

subscribers gave evidence of a cordiality toward his work which

surprised as much as it gratified him. On the list there were also

some of his old European subscribers to the "Poissons Fossiles,"

among them the King of Prussia, who still continued, under the

influence of Humboldt, to feel an interest in his work.

FROM HUMBOLDT TO AGASSIZ.

September 1, 1856.

. . .I hear that by some untoward circumstances, no doubt

accidental, you have never received, my dear Agassiz, the letter

expressing the pleasure which I share with all true lovers of

science respecting your important undertaking, "Contributions to

the Natural History of the United States." You must have been

astonished at my silence, remembering, not only the affectionate

relations we have held to each other ever since your first sojourn

at Paris, but also the admiration I have never ceased to feel for

the great and solid works which we owe to your sagacious mind and

your incomparable intellectual energy. . .I approve especially the

general conceptions which lie at the base of the plan you have

traced. I admire the long series of physiological investigations,

beginning with the embryology of the so-called simple and lower

organisms and ascending by degrees to the more complicated. I

admire that ever-renewed comparison of the types belonging to our

planet, in its present condition, with those now found only in a

fossil state, so abundant in the immense space lying between the

shores opposite to northern Europe and northern Asia. The

geographical distribution of organic forms in curves of equal

density of occupation represents in great degree the inflexions of

the isothermal lines. . .I am charged by the king, who knows the

value of your older works, and who still feels for you the

affectionate regard which he formerly expressed in person, to

request that you will place his name at the head of your long list

of subscribers. He wishes that an excursion across the Atlantic

valley may one day bring you, who have so courageously braved

Alpine summits, to the historic hill of Sans Souci. . .