232 LOUIS AGASSIZ. [CHAP. ix. 



The " Histoire naturelle des Poissons d'Eau douce 

 de 1' Europe Centrale " remained unfinished, and has a 

 rather curious history. Agassiz began it as far back 

 as 1828, when he was a student at Munich, and when 

 his artist friend, Joseph Dinkel, was already making 

 drawings of freshwater fishes for him. 



In 1839 appeared the first " livraison ' of a folio 

 atlas, published " aux frais de 1'auteur," and dedicated 

 to the British Association for the Advancement of 

 Science. This first monograph treated of the salmon 

 family, and was divided into two parts : the first, con- 

 taining the twenty-seven well-executed and luxuriously 

 printed plates by Dinkel, Sonrel, and Nicolet, illus- 

 trating the genera Salmo and Thymalus, with explana- 

 tions in French, German, and English, and with a cover 

 designed by Dinkel, representing fishes in all sorts of 

 attitudes and groups, with a boy four years old - - the 

 portrait of Alexander Agassiz - - fishing on the shore 

 of the Lake of Neuchatel. The second part of the 

 plates was announced to be issued with the first vol- 

 ume of text ; but changes were made, and the text of 

 Vol. I., containing the "Embryologie des Salmones," 

 by C. Vogt, was published in 1842, without plates, the 

 latter being issued in 1848, in Vol. III. of the " Memoires 

 des Sciences naturelles de Neuchatel." 



Agassiz, under the date of 1845, in the introduction 

 of the "Anatomic des Salmones," by L. Agassiz and 

 C. Vogt, gives the following explanation : " The ana- 

 tomical studies contained in this memoir were under- 

 taken for the * Histoire naturelle des Poissons d'Eau 

 douce de 1' Europe Centrale, de M. Agassiz,' and were 



