The Days of a Man 1873 



"I don't know much about Agassiz's Museum, but 

 I am not willing to stand by and see so brave a man 

 struggle without aid." 



Penikese, a little forgotten speck on the ocean, 

 about eighteen miles from New Bedford, is the 

 outermost and least of the Elizabeth Islands, which 

 lie to the south of Buzzards Bay, off the heel of 

 Cape Cod. It comprises some sixty acres of very 

 rocky ground, being indeed only a huge pile of 

 stones with intervals of soil. For the whole cluster 

 was once a great terminal moraine of rocks and clay 

 brought down from the mainland and dropped into 

 the ocean by some ancient glacier, after which the 

 mass was broken by the wash into eight little islands 

 separated by tide channels: 



Naushon, Nonamesset, Uncatena, and Wepecket, 

 Nashawena, Pesquinese, Cuttyhunk, and Penikese. 



The last of these consists of two hills joined to- 

 gether by a narrow isthmus with a little harbor of 

 anchorage; in June, 1873, it bore a farmhouse, a 

 flagstaff, a barn, a willow tree by a spring, and a flock 

 of sheep. And there was founded "the Anderson School 

 of Natural History," for which two new buildings, a 

 laboratory and a dormitory, were duly provided. 

 Choice From the many hundred applicants Agassiz had 

 f chosen fifty teachers, students, and naturalists of 



various grades and from all parts of the country - 

 thirty-five men and fifteen women. The practical 

 recognition of coeducation thus involved was criti- 

 cized by a number of his friends brought up in the 

 monastic schools of New England; but the results 

 justified the innovation. His thought was that 

 those fifty teachers, women as well as men, should 



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