1836-38.] ACADEMY OF LAUSANNE. 123 



chatel, and remained faithful to the place which first 

 gave him an official position. To reward his attach- 

 ment, the citizens of his adopted city wrote him a letter 

 of thanks, announcing at the same time that his salary 

 had been increased by 2000 francs ($400) for three 

 years. A few weeks before the offer of the Lausanne 

 Academy was made, Agassiz was approached by the 

 already celebrated physician, Auguste de la Rive, on 

 the subject of a chair at the Geneva Academy. In a 

 letter dated May, 1838, de la Rive stated frankly how 

 the matter stood ; and that he himself and everybody 

 at Geneva thought that Agassiz was the one indis- 

 pensable man. But Agassiz was already too strongly 

 bound by his lithographic establishment and printing 

 works to break his connection with Neuchatel ; at least, 

 he thought so, and declined the friendly offers of de la 

 Rive. It was doubtless a mistake ; for Geneva would 

 have given him more support and income than he was 

 able to get at Neuchatel. As de la Rive told him, " at 

 Geneva you would be a second de Saussure." 



After a short journey to Paris, during July, 1838, in 

 connection with his work on the " Poissons fossiles," 

 and to examine more carefully than he had done before 

 the method of the laboratory at the Jardin des Plantes 

 for moulding fossil animals, he started for the Hassli 

 in the Oberland of Berne, studying carefully all glacial 

 marks round the village of ^Guttannen, the Handeck, at 

 the Grimsel, and at the glacier of Rosenlaui. Agassiz 

 took with him five persons, making a party of six, - - his 

 brother-in-law Max Braun, a mining engineer just re- 



