60 LOUIS AGASSIZ. [CHAP. iv. 



description. Dinkel remained in England for several 

 years, either in London, or at the country seat of 

 Philip Egerton, near Chester, and at Enniskillen in Ire- 

 land, and made one of the best and most valuable 

 collections of drawings of fossil fishes, which was after- 

 ward purchased by the subscriptions of English geolo- 

 gists, and presented to the British Museum. 



On the 3d of December, 1834, at a meeting of the 

 Neuchatel Society of Natural History, Agassiz deliv- 

 ered a lecture on the present state of natural science 

 in England, on the splendid collections of fossils and 

 living animals there, and more particularly on the great 

 progress and extraordinary enlargement of the Zoologi- 

 cal Garden of London. 



The echinoderms had already attracted much of his 

 attention. The peculiar beauties of these fossils, their 

 great numbers around Neuchatel and in the Jura. Moun- 

 tains, and the ease of identifying them, even from 

 fragments, led him to undertake a " Monographic des 

 Echinodermes." At the meeting of the Neuchatel 

 Society, Jan. 10, 1834, he made a communication, in 

 abstract, of the main discoveries already arrived at 

 by his researches, and his memoir entitled, " Notice 

 sur les fossiles du terrain cretace du Jura Neuchate- 

 lois" ("Memoire Soc. Sc. nat. de Neuchatel," Vol. I., 

 p. 126, 1835) began his series of publications on " Echi- 

 nides." He describes twelve species found in the cre- 

 taceous rocks of Neuchatel, eight of which were entirely 

 new. The paper is marked by great originality of 

 classification, clearness of description, and exactness of 



