AMERICAN IMPRESSIONS 215 



March saw him back in Charleston, where he attended the 

 annual meeting of the American Association for the Advance- 

 ment of Science. Then to Washington, where he delivered four 

 lectures at the Smithsonian Institution. At Charleston he again 

 met Agassiz, and once more records the profound impression 

 which the American zoologist produced upon him. " His fine 

 thought," he writes, " of reforming the classifications of animals 

 by a more intimate study of their young in the various stages 

 from embryonic life to full development, grows apace ; and if he 

 lives to bring out his conception of a system based upon this, it 

 will not only crown his memory for ever, but be the greatest 

 step of the present age in zoological science... He is certainly a 

 man of extraordinary genius, great energy, and with the most 

 rapid inductive powers I have ever known. I could not help 

 saying to myself, as I sat and listened, Well, it is pleasant to be 

 hearing all this, as it is uttered, and for the first time. If one 

 lives to be an old man, one will have to say, ' I remember to 

 have heard Agassiz say so and so,' and then every one will 

 listen, just as we should do to a person who had conversed with 

 Linnaeus or Cuvier." We must remember that this appreciation 

 of Agassiz's ideas was written nine years before the publication 

 of Darwin's Origin of Species, and at a time when American 

 men of science were much interested in a controversy as to 

 whether mankind are all descended from Adam and Eve, or 

 from several separate creations in different parts of the world. 

 One of his last letters written on American soil contains a note 

 on another subject, significant in the light of subsequent events. 

 " I have been twice at sittings of the Senate, and have heard a 

 good sensible speech on the Union question, which is now 

 agitating folk here... The bone of contention is Slavery." 



The spring of 1850 saw him once again settled in Dublin, 

 with a great accumulation of work on hand. Part of the 

 summer was spent in collecting Algae on the coast of Antrim ; 

 and he met again his friends Asa Gray and his wife, who were 

 visiting Europe. Another acquaintance made at this time, 

 which ripened into a warm friendship, was the result of the 

 finding by Mrs Alfred Gatty, well-known as a writer of fiction, 

 of the Chrysymenia orcadensis of Harvey at Filey, in fruit for the 



