Recollections of Agassiz

OLD VALENCIENNES, Professor at the Garden of Plants in Paris, used to call him “ Ce cher Agassiz.” The French in their short sayings seldom miss the mark; he was, indeed, that dear Agassiz.

The Garden of Plants (or Museum of Natural History, as the professors call it) was one of his daily haunts in the old times before he came to America. Not many of those travelers who throng the Boulevards and the Rue de la Paix know anything of that place so sweet to the student. It is three miles from the shops and the hotels. You keep on past the Ile St. Louis, and the great depot of wines, where the guardians stand all day in their glazed caps, gimlet in hand, ready to test the casks as they are carted out, and you come to an open gate on the Rue Cuvier. Once past the sentry, the air takes on a sort of repose, quite foreign to the rattle of the quai, just outside. On the right, a nursery of young pear-trees; on the left, paddocks with several species of deer; then sedate porcupines, whose meek look contrasts so strongly with their warlike quills; farther on, the galleries of anatomy, with groups of peasants staring at the skeleton of the whale, outside. Opposite is the duck pond, where there is pretty sure to be a bridal pair from the Quartier Latin who are taking their wedding walk, and who have stopped to gaze at the silver gulls, and the great grotesque adjutant bird standing motionless on one leg.

As you pass the round lecture hall, pasted over with announcements of the different courses, it grows more and more quiet until you come into a paved square and are confronted by an old building propped at one end with timbers. Go in by the middle entrance, the stair is on the left; ascend two flights and there is a small brown door with this inscription: “Mollusques et Zoophytes.” On one side hangs a bell-rope with a coneshell for handle, and an inscription requesting you to pull hard. In reply to the bell comes Pierre, in his blue apron and French cap. Nobody knows exactly how old Pierre is; he is one of those government employés who always look the same, and who never seem either young or old. He speaks in the subdued voice of one often in the presence of great men who do not like to be interrupted. Lately he has taken to spectacles, because of injury from a Prussian shell which exploded in the laboratory. “It was full of powdersmoke, and dust from the plaster,” said Pierre, in a simple sort of way, “ and five drawers full of fossils were wholly destroyed. Monsieur Deshayes felt very badly about them.” Now the laboratory has got back its usual look, and its vague smell of dried shells and sponges, with an occasional whiff of alcohol. Five little rooms there are in all, lull of specimens that are ready for the galleries, or under examination. In the corner is the small study of Professor Deshayes, successor of Valenciennes and of Lacaze Duthiers, the most learned and charming of men. Few know the plain ways of such people. A cup of coffee in the morning; at noon some tea with a bit of meat and a crust of bread; and then hard work again till evening. These men are professors in the Museum and members of the Academy, the highest scientific position in France, They have no fortune, and never expect to have any; but their craving for knowledge and their love of fame keep them there laborious to the end. Thus we can understand why Agassiz said in America, “I have no time to make money.” In that very laboratory, and in others like it, he worked for years, never knowing the value of silver except as it served to get his meals at some café of the students; or, when very fortunate, to buy a scientific book at second hand, from the open-air stalls near the Institut. His small handwriting, which seemed unnatural in so broad and impulsive a character, was a result of early necessity. On the backs of old letters, and on odd scraps of paper, be copied, as closely as possible, many volumes which he needed but which he could not buy. “Here,” said excellent M. Rousseau, patting emphatically a small pine table in the second room, “here he used to sit, every day when he was not in the galleries, and study echinoderms — ce eher Agassiz ! ” Those little low rooms, in the old building propped at one end with timbers — they should be the Mecca of scientific devotees ! Perhaps every great zoölogist of the past hundred years has sat in them, and discussed the problems which are always inviting solution and are never solvedCuvier, Humboldt, Johannes Midler, Von Baer — they all have gone, except the last, who lingers to remind us of the giants that once were. And Humboldt recognized Agassiz as one who was growing toward his own stature. He gave him that good dinner at the cafe, and that good advice with it, which the recipient so pleasantly described at the Humboldt centennial.

Then there are those “galleries” which must not be forgotten. Go down the stairs once more to the paved court, and take the wide gravel path that leads past the Administration (what is a public establishment in France without an Administration!). On the right, and almost overhanging the way, is the great, cedar of Lebanon planted in the time of Louis XIV. To the old tree it seems only yesterday that it stretched its dark branches over the Swiss naturalist as he walked to his daily task with the strong step of a mountaineer. It could tell you of Buffon and his rambles in the King’s Garden, when he would come up to Paris from the confines of Burgundy and “ les vieilles tours du château do Mont bard.” Just beyond, you pass between the great greenhouses and descend a flight of steps to the esplanade of botany. On the right, and at the end of a fair alley of lime-trees, stands a long building, with an old clock in the centre gable. Here are the Galleries of Zoölogy. Again go up two small flights of stairs and turn to the right, past a boa-constrictor in a tall glass of spirits, — quite a landmark in its way, — and keep on through a long hall whose ancient but well polished floor of inlaid wood imperils the footing of the unwonted foreigner. In the wall-cases, and in the centre, there are stuffed animals, while the ceiling is beset with alligators, standing there like so many flies. Philippe Poteau will explain, in a, deprecatory manner, that this is not a position natural to alligators; but one that results from lack of room in the eases. The Administration has handed in plans for new buildings, but government is too much occupied with the army to give a great deal to science. Philippe must have been born somewhere in the galleries, so thoroughly is he pervaded by their air. He it is that made the noted collection of ethnographic photographs. From his laboratory window he always looked, with a watchful eye, into the garden, and when a new “type” appeared — an African Spahis, perchance, or the follower of some Japanese ambassador, Philippe would snatch off his blouse and velvet cap, put on his black coat and hat, and hasten after the type to persuade him to sit for a likeness. From this hall of stuffed animals, two tall doors with heavy locks of curious ironmongery lead to just such another hall, in which are displayed some of the radiated animals, and mollusca. Here Agassiz loved to work, and here he got together much material for his Catalogue raisonné. His handwriting may be seen on the labels, beside that of Valenciennes and De Blainville, and of the great Lamarck, who, as Professor Martins will have us think, was the real originator of that theory of evolution known as Darwinism. Everywhere in these galleries and laboratories it is the same; you are surrounded by the traditions of science. The spirits of great naturalists still haunt the corridors, and speak through the specimens their hands have set in order. And, as if to hind past and present in unbroken reality, sometimes there passes an old man, whom time has forgotten; a contemporary of Cuvier and Geoffrey Saint Hilaire, and who nuw regards Milne Edwards as a youth of promise.

These scenes, and scenes like these, Agassiz left in 1846, The books and collections were his tools in trade; the professors were his fellow-workmen. He left them all, to come to the United States, where nature was rich, but tools and workmen were few; and traditions none. It was the act of a man bold, restless, and original. He was not spurred by failure, for already his reputation had been made by his great monographs on the glaciers and on fossil fishes. He came, perhaps, in a spirit of adventure and of curiosity; but he staid because lie loved a country where new things could be built up; where he could think and speak as he pleased; and where his ceaseless activity would be considered a high quality.

From that time forth, Louis Agassiz grew more and more an American. He became a master of English composition, and spoke the language not only with fluency, but with a voluble eloquence which was peculiarly his own. He studied the modes of thought among the people, and learned to know in what they differed from the European. His family ties, his household, his associates were of the country; and yet, after all, he was unchanged. A genius like his could put itself in communication with many and different people; it could grow also, but it could not change.

A thing he never liked, and which troubled him quite as much in this country as in others, was book-learning. Text-books and “ school-series ” exasperated him; and he had a sympathetic recollection of Humboldt who laughed at the elaborate encyclopedia and called it a pons asinorum. This turn of mind led him to gather what he considered the real books, animals of all sorts, preserved, so far as might be, in their natural state — “material for investigation,” he always called them. Before long he had, with incredible activity, got together a respectable representation of Our fauna, kept in such bottles, glasses, and phials, as could be obtained, and placed for safety in a poor wooden shanty or outhouse, in Cambridge. Once, after a vacation, Agassiz went to inspect his precious store. It was gone! The building was no longer there! In trouble of spirit he asked its whereabouts, and was told that the college had caused the shed to be “moved” to a distant spot, near the Brighton bridge. Distracted by visions of jars overturned and broken glasses, he hastened thither, and was overjoyed to find that, in this remarkable country, a building might be bodily carried from place to place, without disturbing the most delicate preparations.

In those days (it was about 1853) he still kept up his habit of walking, for which he had been noted even among the guides of his native mountains. To illustrate the lectures on geology, he used to invite students to accompany him on excursions to neighboring towns. From boyhood an associate of students, there was no company in which he felt more at ease; and he regarded, with unfeigned consternation, the stiff relations that, twenty years ago, subsisted between our professors and their pupils. It was pleasant to see him, at the, head of a score of ns youugsters, taking his way towards the pudding-stone quarries in Roxbury. His face wore an easy smile, and, as his quick, brown eye wandered over the landscape, it saw more than did all our eyes put together; for he looked, but we only stared. Near by, like a sort of lieutenant, walked Jacques Burkhardt, the life-long friend and artist of the great professor. Though his beard was white, he never grew old; and, to the last, preferred the cheerful company of the collegians. Whomever we came to a gravel pit, or a railway cut, the professor would stop, and would expatiate on the structure of the drift with as much interest as if he saw it for the first time. This enthusiasm, fresh and untiring over trite facts, was a source of immense power to him. It showed his French blood, for it was but an enlargement of that peculiar temper which renders the Parisian workmen at once the most interesting and the most successful in the world. Of the section of conglomerate in Roxbury be was never tired of talking; and, over and over again, to different sets of hearers, would explain the cleavage planes of the rock; and how the cleavage had cut right through hard pebbles, like a knife; then the structure of the stone itself, and the different origins of flat and of rounded pebbles; and finally he would climb to the top of the ledge, and earnestly show the grooves and scratches running north and south, and the surface polished by the glaciers.

His collections soon got a step higher than the unstable shed. They were put in an oblong wooden building, somewhat better than a barn and not quite so good as a house. It stood between the scientific school and Cambridge common. One of the scientific students was lodged, not too luxuriously, in one corner; there was a working-room above, and a sort of study and lecture-room below, one side of which was occupied with a long blackboard of slate slabs. Such a great blackboard was a necessity for Agassiz, as precious to him as his right hand. It is very curious that he never learned to make finished drawings :— curious, because he had often been too poor to employ an artist, and because his accuracy of eye and of touch were remarkable. If there were ten hairs in the field of the microscope and the artist had put eleven in the drawing, the professor would exclaim, the moment he got liis head over the eyepiece, “ Those cilia are crowded; there must be too many!” He would hold the dried shell of a turtle in his left hand and with a saw divide it lengthwise into precise halves, with no other guide than his eye. Although he never attempted to become an artist, his chalk outlines on the blackboard were what few artists could make. The thousands of people who have heard his lectures will always recollect the astonishing rapidity with which he drew an animal, putting in only the characteristic points. If he were saying, “ The salmons have a peculiar fatty fin, called the adipose,” almost with the words would appear an unmistakable chalk outline of the fish. There was no better nor more pitiless critic of a zoological drawing. lie rarely was satisfied with the finest work. Were the artist painstaking, he would encourage him with, “ Try it once again; it ’s all wrong, but don’t get out of patience.” The careless or selfsufficient draughtsman got a brisk admonition. The man who never failed to please him was Sonrel, who made the plates for the Embryology of Turtles, of which Claparéde said, “ I had supposed that such lithography was impossible. ”

Those were especially the days of turtles, when, in 1856, the second volume of Contributions to the Natural History of the United States was in preparation. From the four corners of the earth these animals were there gathered together, and the iterated names Emys, Testudo, and Chelonia drove all the rest of Latin nomenclature out of our heads. They were everywhere, some preserved in jars, and some dried on shelves; then the living ones in all directions. A large Galapagos tortoise dwelt in the front entry ; many little terrapins hid under the stair; and softshell turtles inhabited tubs. The professor’s own house was not free from them, and his little garden was, at times, quite swarming. The excitement culminated when there arrived, one day, a strong box with bars, suitable for a wild beast, and containing two huge Mississippi snappers, perhaps the most ferocious, and, for their size, the strongest of reptiles. The professor traced the ferocity back at once, and showed that the very embryo of the snapper, before it is ready for hatching, would fiercely bite a bit of stick. We were getting clear of turtles, and were dropping down among the jelly-fishes, in preparation for the third volume of Contributions, when there happened an event that marked a new era in the life of Agassiz.

People had begun to find out that a very valuable collection was piled up in the barn-like building, and that there was little provision for its care, and great risk of its burning. It indeed was a pathetic-looking museum, — two great, dreary rooms with rough tables and chests of drawers, on which were piled alcoholic preparations in bottles, none of them good, and scarcely two alike. There were tall jars meant to be cylindrical, closed with slabs of cork which had been round before they got warped : then pickle bottles, wide mouthed phials, and many other receptacles. In winter the bad glass snapped and let out as much of the alcohol as had not evaporated through the loose stoppers during the heat of summer. Many witnesses could testify to the evil state of affairs. Committees of the Overseers came and looked despairingly at the two large rooms. There was one who had known of these pressing needs and had thought of them. On the death of Mr. F. C. Gray in 1858, it was found that he had left fifty thousand dollars to establish a Museum of Comparative Zooölogy; and his nephew, Mr. William Gray, scrupulously following his uncle’s inclinations, selected Harvard College as the proper institution. During the following year, a committee of gentlemen raised more than seventy thousand dollars, and the State gave one hundred thousand. Why, at a time when natural history attracted even less attention than it now does, did an individual, and a body of gentlemen, and a State legislature, all interest themselves to give large sums of money to found an establishment purely for scientific investigation ? It was because Agassiz was something more than a very strong zoölogist, He was a man of what people call, in defiance of physics, “magnetism.” Everybody sought his society, and no one could stand before his words and his smile. It is proper to say “ everybody,” for this power of his influenced all alike. The fishermen at Nahant would pull two or three miles to bring him a rare fish; and only for the pleasure of seeing him rush out of his little laboratory, crying, “Oh! where did you get that? That is a species which goes as far as Brazil. Nobody has ever seen it north of Cape Cod. Come in, come in and sit down ! ” He would talk with farmers about the history and the breeding of cattle and horses with the greatest earnestness and excitement. In fact his profound general sympathies led him to put aside the social position of the person he addressed; he not only did not care for, but was almost unconscious of it. He often laughed over something that happened to him in London. They were dissecting a crocodile at the college of surgeons, and an interesting part was given to him, which he tied in a silk handkerchief and then declared himself ready to accompany an eminent naturalist who was waiting. The gentleman looked dubiously at the package and suggested that his servant should carry it, or that they should take a coach; both of which offers were declined with great simplicity. After they had walked a little in the street, Agassiz suddenly stopped, and said : “ You are ashamed to walk with me, because I have a bundle! ” The Englishman’s native honesty rallied at once, and he replied, “I was ashamed to walk with you, and now I am ashamed of myself; let me carry that handkerchief for you.”

Nothing better illustrated the power of his enthusiasm than his public lectures. Often he would talk of things familiar and easy to understand; but sometimes he would plunge among difficult matters of structure and morphology, where only technical language could be used. Then it was curious to watch the faces of the thousand people who sat listening to him, and to see their expression of struggling perplexity, as the great professor, with ever-increasing rapidity of thought and word, went on through nucleated cells, vibratile cilia, and epithelium. All the while the audience tried hard to understand, and listened with unflagging interest till the firm ground of every-day facts was reached again.

Another characteristic, which added to his power and popularity, was his intense devotion to science, which few people cared for, and his unfeigned ignorance of, and indifference to, money, which everybody cared for. More than this, he was singularly careless of personal ambition and place and glory; a feeling which increased with his years. But he was eager for, and would struggle hard to get any position, or point of advantage, which would enable him to push his favorite studies. It is not surprising that such qualities had a strong effect among a people like the Americans, who set a very high value on enthusiasm and disinterestedness. His advocates, when urging appropriations, could always say : “ This is a man who, at the height of Napoleon’s power, refused the directorship of the Garden of Plants, and a seat as senator of the empire. He might, with little pains, have been rich; but he is penniless, after much toil, and the very house over his head is mortgaged to support a museum which belongs to other people.” As to the value of abstract science, many persons were not in a position to judge and were obliged to take his word for it; but at any rate, nobody would stand by and see so brave a man struggle without aid.

The sudden appearance of such considerable sums of money turned the current of Agassiz’s thoughts in a new direction, and in one which they afterwards kept. He determined to found a great Museum of Comparative Zoölogy, arranged to show his views of the relations of living animals among themselves and their connections in the geological and embryological successions. Such a museum he hoped to leave as a legacy—his all — to the people of this country, and to make it at once a mark of his affection and a monument of his labor. He gave less and less of his time to those special investigations by which he had gained his reputation, and pondered more and more on this museum, which should serve as a sort of tabulation of the creative thought, by presenting the creations themselves in a connected order.

When the first section of the edifice was finished, fire-proof and fairly fitted with shelves and cases, a grand moving took place, and the motley boxes and bottles were carried, or carted, in all haste to the new quarters. Meanwhile the barn-like building was not treated with ignominy. On the contrary, it also was moved to an honorable spot, near the new museum, and was slated, papered, and painted, and turned into lodgings for students and artists. Such an old coat as the collection had was not suited to so fine a house, and fresh clothing was ordered in the form of fair glass jars, with good ground stoppers. But this child kept outgrowing its clothes. We could never get jars, or drawers, or alcohol enough! In a museum of natural history everything pours in, and nothing goes out, except money. Nature has no beginning or middle or end; the process of increase and arrangement is an everlasting one. The Brazilian expedition of 1865 brought home barrels and cases by tlie hundred, and so did the Hassler expedition of 1871. Nor were these half; for the incessant eagerness of the director sought original collections from all parts of the world, some by exchange and some by purchase. In 1870 the building was increased to double its former capacity, but it does not afford room to-day for the arrangement of the collections stored in it.

Year by year Agassiz strove to support the ever-increasing burdens of his task. —his vast correspondence carried on in three languages; the superintendence of numerous assistants; protracted conferences almost daily with the learned men who were at the head of the different departments; and a constant and intense study of the grand question of arrangement. In addition to this labor, especially devoted to the museum, he exerted himself in many other ways. He gave lectures and contributed to scientific literature. He was at the disposal of every one who came to ask questions; and he found time to attend agricultural meetings, learned societies, and literary clubs. Besides all this, he undertook a task very disagreeable to him in asking aid to carry on so expensive an establishment. More than once his warm friend and admirer. Brown-Séquard, warned him that such a strain was not to be borne. Agassiz could not stop. He was driven by a power like that which the Greeks called mighty fate. At length, in December of 1869, his system gave way, and his brain was attacked in a manner which threatened paralysis. Nothing saved him then but his powerful constitution, seconded by the most careful treatment. Weakened by disease and with death imminent, his heroism was at once noble and pathetic. One day the tears began to roll down his cheeks, and he said: “ Brown-Séquard tells me I must not think. Nobody can ever know the tortures I endure in trying to stop thinking ! ’ ’

Had it been in his nature to be what is called prudent, or to draw lessons from the past, he would never have been what be was. He worked four years longer, and then fell : — suddenly, and in the glory of his power.

To Agassiz applies the familiar saying that he was winning in his ways; nay, more than this, the ways were often irresistible. He was a French Swiss, and in him was developed in its highest degree the Gallic power of pleasing. No man was more set in his aims; no man more determined and courageous in their pursuit; but he had not the Saxon style of riding rough-shod over people who were in the path. He worked his way through the crowd of the world deftly; and, when he arrived, as he always did, at the wished-for place, it was with a kindly smile on his face, and accompanied by the good-will even of his opponents. His kindliness was inseparable from his nature, and was a force in itself. It was shown by his love of children and his inexhaustible patience with them, and by his toleration of dull or ignorant people. Behind this came his enthusiasm, like the line after its skirmishers; his kindliness charmed, his enthusiasm overwhelmed and carried off captive. These qualities gave an extraordinary play to a face which would otherwise have been massive, and a boyish twinkle to an eye which had not been a boy’s for half a century. His powers were all mobilized; none were reserved, or shut up, or in places of difficult access; therefore he was the most brilliant of talkers. Although cheerful and fond of laughter, he was not exactly humorous; and, singularly enough, was incapable of comprehending the ludicrous mixture of exaggeration and contradiction which we call a joke. Nevertheless he appreciated sarcasm and enjoyed fine wit. One day he came smiling into his study and said: “ I have thought of a good hit for the Evolutionists, who say they can effect anything, if only they have enough time and repetition. You recollect the Tragische Geschichte of Chamisso, where the philosopher is discontented because his queue hangs behind him; so he turns himself round; and finding it still behind him, he keeps on spinning, expecting to get it in front. I asked Felton if it would do to introduce this in my Essay on Classification, but he thought it too much of a pleasantry for so serious a topic, so I will hint at it in a foot-note. ” ¹

It has already been said that Agassiz was a man who seemed rather driven by mighty fate, than led by inclination or taste. The craving for knowledge and the love of imparting it to other people were the passions before which he could not stand if he would, and would not if he could. That he was influenced by both at once was remarkable, and in keeping with other exceptional combinations presently to be noticed. Good teachers are not commonly original investigators; and original investigators often lack both the will and the power to tell other people what they know. No village schoolmaster was ever more patient than he in teaching elementary zoölogy; and when, for the thousandth time, he would write with chalk on the blackboard the words Vertebrata, Articulata, Mollusca, and Radiata, it was with a zeal and vigor that showed he was doing something agreeable. From a class of school-girls he would turn to his microscope and specimens, and, within five minutes, would take up the thread of a research which lay in the farthest limits of zoölogy. But one of the two things he must always have in hand, investigation or teaching.

The intellect of Agassiz was one of the noblest of the Latin race, and it is no exaggeration to call it colossal. It was one of the few in this or in any generation, which not only had great intensity but also had the capacity to see and examine both sides of a question. Here again is a rare combination. As a rule, the greater the intensity, the less the discrimination ; and when such an over-balance is fully carried out, we have a fanatic. Despite so much real progress in charity and gentleness, fanatics were never perhaps more numerous than they now are; and a large part of them are just where there should be none, — in science. The wheel of human thought has again brought to the surface an old form of philosophy under the name of positivism. Positivism is the doctrine of necessity carefully illustrated by a series of phenomena; or, if you please, it is a series of phenomena carefully arranged to lead to, and illustrate, the doctrine of necessity. It has done much good, and is likely to do more, in breaking down dogmas and crude superstition, and in teaching exact modes of thought. It has done much harm, and is likely to do more, in weakening the vital idea of free will, and in leading to the neglect, and even contempt, of what is spiritual in nature. As a system of philosophy it resembles all others that ever were thought out, in that it illuminates one side of the medal and leaves the other in darkness; or even ignores the existence of any other side. Finally, it also resembles all other philosophical systems in its power to breed fanatics. When one has read the story through he is tempted to say : This game is not worth the candle. If life itself and all Cosmos are only a procession of figures, why take so much pains about them? And especially, why talk so much about Truth? It is essentially as well to feed on Falsehood, which may be made as sweet as you like; whereas the truth of positivism is nothing but that ghastly procession ; it is despair. Strauss must have had some such notion when he, in substance, said: Kingship is a fraud, but, just now, it is advisable fervently to uphold the Hohenzollerns.

We cannot easily understand how a mind of such intensity as that of Agassiz, and of such vivid belief, could check itself, at each step, to weigh evidence and probabilities; how, in a word, it could escape fanaticism. Everything seemed to draw him in that direction, and the hidden cord that held him back was a thing not to be expected. Nay, many observers, taking in simply the glow of his enthusiasm, held him for one who had too much abandoned himself to rapid and brilliant generalizations. But generalization was only a part of his well-considered method of work, He knew that the workman, to avoid being cramped by his material, must sometimes deal rough blows, to get a guide,—some light and some form to go by. What observers were apt not to see, was the long and patient toil; the plodding among dry details ; the deep reflection that returned again and again to its object. Nor were they apt to see how the truth of science was to him a law that brooked neither excuse nor delay; and how, in resignation, he would turn on his own structures and remorselessly tear them down; saying: “ If I have more ability than some men, then my mistakes are more dangerous than theirs.”

The steadiness of his discrimination especially showed itself in treating the popular philosophy. To a man of his spiritual nature there were few things more discordant than positivism; and yet he did not usually condemn it by name, or as a whole; but, on the contrary, recommended its good parts, its exactness of method, patient research, and freedom from superstition. Xor did this charity rise from indifference or lack of appreciation. Agassiz was a horn metaphysician, and moreover had pursued severe studies in philosophy. Those who knew him well were constantly surprised at the ease with which he handled the more intricate problems of thought. It was charming, for example, to hear him, in familiar conversation, treat of the relation of Darwinism to other theories of evolution, and show the different interpretations it had received from the English, German, and French minds. Darwinism was to him the sum of wrong-headedness, yet Darwin has called him his most courteous opponent, and most formidable.

Last, and above all, Agassiz was a man of an inborn spiritual belief, which made a primary element in his nature, and which entered into all his interpretations of the outer world. That material form was the cover of a spirit appeared to him a truth fundamental and almost self-evident. His own personality was a unit indestructible and destined to unceasing development and improvement. In the presence of death he exhibited a faith which towered above creeds and dogmas, and whose roots were in the depths of his soul.

He is dead, and a great light has gone out. We buried him from the chapel that stands among the college elms. The students laid a wreath of laurel on his bier, and their manly voices sang his requiem ; for he had been a student all his life long, and, when he died, he was younger than any of them.

Theodore Lyman.