50 LOUIS AGASSIZ. 



possible ; it rained, snowed, froze, blew, all 

 at once. It was a pity, since our road lay 

 through one of the prettiest valleys I have 

 ever seen, watered by the Neckar, and bor- 

 dered on both sides by mountains of singular 

 form and of considerable height. They are 

 what the Wurtembergers call the Suabian 

 Alps, but I think that Chaumont is higher 

 than the loftiest peak of their Alps. Here we 

 found an old Heidelberg acquaintance, whose 

 father owns a superb collection of fossils, es- 

 pecially of shells and zoophytes. He has also 

 quite a large collection of shells from the 

 Adriatic Sea, but among these last not one 

 was named. As we knew them, we made it 

 our duty to arrange them, and in three hours 

 his whole collection was labeled. Since he 

 has duplicates of almost everything, he prom- 

 ised, as soon as he should have time, to make 

 a selection from these and send them to us. 

 Could we have stayed longer we might have 

 picked out what we pleased, for he placed his 

 collection at our disposal. But we were in 

 haste to arrive here, so we begged him to send 

 us, at his leisure, whatever he could give us. 



Thence we continued our journey by post, 

 because it still rained, and the roads were so 

 detestable that with the best will in the world 



