ZOOLOGY 



Agassiz in 

 America 



The teacher 

 of American 

 zoologists 



presented it. Today we recognize several periods of 

 glaciation, with warmer intervals ; and any one travel- 

 ing across America in a train can recognize the gla- 

 ciated areas by their topography. 



7. As time passed, Agassiz's financial condition got 

 worse and worse, until it was really desperate. Some- 

 thing had to be done. At this juncture the king of 

 Prussia, through Humboldt, offered Agassiz some three 

 thousand dollars to be spent in scientific travel ; and 

 the Lowell Institute at Boston asked him to deliver a 

 course of lectures. Consequently, in October, 1846, 

 Agassiz arrived in Boston, and gave his first series of 

 lectures, on "The Plan of Creation." He had little 

 experience in speaking English, but he could illustrate 

 his meaning by drawings in chalk ; and from the first 

 his audiences were not merely sympathetic, they were 

 charmed. No one in this country had ever been able 

 to make natural history so interesting. Agassiz, on 

 his part, was amazed and delighted at the warmth of 

 his welcome and the amount of money he was able to 

 make. At last the burden of debt was lifted, and he 

 was square with the world. He meant to return, of 

 course, but he had not been long in America when he 

 learned of his wife's death, and gradually the home ties 

 seemed to weaken, as those connecting with the New 

 World strengthened. In 1848 he was offered a pro- 

 fessorship at Harvard University, and in view of the 

 then disturbed state of Europe, he was glad to accept. 

 The following year he married an American lady, 

 Elizabeth Cabot Cary. 



8. From 1848 to the time of his death in December, 

 1873, Agassiz devoted himself to the development of 

 American zoology. In this quarter of a century he 

 did much work of his own and planned much more, 



