4 LOUIS AGASSIZ. [CHAP. i. 



That the Agassiz were descendants of French Hu- 

 guenots, and were obliged to leave France at the 

 revocation of the "edit de Nantes," is a tradition with- 

 out any solid basis of fact to rest upon. Indeed, the 

 name Agassiz existed as far back as the thirteenth 

 century in the Canton de Vaud ; but it is impossible to 

 trace the family, because all the papers belonging to 

 the Agassiz were destroyed in a fire at the parsonage 

 of Constantine, in the Canton de Vaud, where the 

 grandfather of Louis was settled as pastor, a pro- 

 fession followed in the family for five generations. 



Very likely an Agassiz married a French Huguenot; 

 for at the time of the revocation the French Protestant 

 exiles flocked into Switzerland, and settled in large 

 numbers at Orbe and in the environs ; almost com- 

 pletely filling the villages now known as Ballaigues, 

 Vallorbe, and La Vallee de Joux, and it is possible that 

 an Agassiz married among them ; which may account 

 for the tradition. 



There is much to favour the belief in a connection of 

 the Agassiz with some French family of the Cevennes, 

 or of Provence ; for the extraordinary imagination of 

 Louis Agassiz points to a close connection with the 

 children of sunny Provence, so well portrayed by 

 Alphonse Daudet in his series of romances on Tartarin 

 of Tarascon. 



The family features are, however, entirely Swiss, and 

 even Jurassic. In general, they are broad shouldered, 

 thickly built, bony, with fair-coloured faces, and rather 

 slow in their movements, a type very frequently met 

 all along the foot of the mountains of the Jura, more 



