8 INTRODUCTION 



important center of zoological investigation in the country. Agassiz ele- 

 vated these studies to a much higher plane than they had occupied by 

 placing them in close touch with European scholarship and also by broad- 

 ening and extending them by the introduction of comparative embryology 

 and physiology. He also founded and built up the first great zoological 

 museum in the country. 



The Cambridge school did not, however, contain all the zoologists in 

 the country. In 1846 James Dwight Dana, who had become a Professor 

 in Yale and is now remembered rather as a geologist and a mineralogist, 

 published his Report on the Zoophytes, and in 1852 his Report on the 

 Crustacea of the Wilkes Expedition, both epoch-making zoological works 

 and the most extensive works of a monographic nature which up to that 

 time had been published by an American. In 1854 appeared the remainder 

 of his report on the zoology of this Expedition. Joseph Leidy also, in 

 Philadelphia, was beginning his brilliant studies of parasitic worms and 

 other small animals. 



The study of shells was followed assiduously in this country during 

 this period. Dr. A. A. Gould of Boston, who published the Report of 

 the Hollusks of the Wilkes Expedition and also the Invertebrata of 

 Massachusetts, Isaac Lea of Philadelphia and A. and W. G. Binney being 

 among the most important of the many authors. The study of insects 

 was likewise making important advances and T. W. Harris produced his 

 Forest Insects, one of the earliest works on economic entomology. 



The most important zoological work of the sixth, seventh, and eighth 

 decades of the century was undoubtedly the study of the marine animals 

 of our coast by Louis Agassiz and his pupils and followers, of whom 

 James McCrady, William Stimpson, Theodore Lyman, Alexander Agassiz, 

 Alpheus Hyatt, H. J. Clark, and A. E. Verrill are particularly to be 

 mentioned. During the same period J. L. Le Conte, Samuel Scudder, 

 C. V. Riley, and A. S. Packard were engaged in the study of insects and 

 in laying the foundation of the influential American school of systematic 

 and economic entomology, and J. H. Comstock established the department 

 of entomology at Cornell which has become a leading factor in the devel- 

 opment of the science in this country. Vertebrates were also being 

 studied assiduously by E. D. Cope, who in the study of fishes, amphib- 

 ians, reptiles, and mammals, and by S. F. Baird and Elliott Coues, 

 who, in that of birds and mammals, all produced work of fundamental 

 importance. 



In December, 1873, Louis Agassiz died and with his death ended an 

 important era in the history of American zoology but only to give way 

 to another more important. The distinctive school of zoological investi- 

 gation which he founded continued to flourish, not only in Cambridge 



