120 LOUIS AGASS/Z. [CHAP. vi. 



teacher, and helping in the translation into French, and 

 in collaboration with E. Duret, of one volume of Karl 

 Ritter's Geography on Africa, and of a small memoir 

 by A. de Klipstein and J. J. Kaup on the Dinotheritim 

 giganteum. His knowledge of natural history was 

 very limited, and consisted only of what any student 

 who followed lectures at Heidelberg and Paris would 

 pick up. He had studied law, and had received no 

 proper education to become a naturalist. He offered 

 himself at the Hofwyl Institut, near Berthoud, directed 

 by the celebrated Fellenberg, as a teacher of modern 

 languages, more especially of French, for which he 

 had fitted himself during his four years' stay in Paris. 

 Agassiz saw at once that his natural history knowledge 

 was most elementary ; but as he was able to make good 

 translations into French and German, and was intelli- 

 gent and ready to undertake anything to get his living, 

 Agassiz engaged him. 



It must not be supposed that Desor was taken by 

 Agassiz as collaborator and assistant in natural history. 

 He was taken only as a secretary ; for, as we have said, 

 until then the natural sciences were almost completely 

 unknown to him. His only duties at first were to write 

 letters under Agassiz's dictation, to keep the accounts, 

 to oversee what was going on at the lithography and at 

 the printing-press. During the first two years of his 

 stay at Neuchatel, he took only the scientific title of 

 geographer. But he followed Agassiz's public lectures, 

 and quickly apprehended everything said by Agassiz, 

 learning natural history with great facility. He had a 

 good memory, and was a hard worker,- - "infatigable," 



