1846.] DEPARTURE FROM NEUCHATEL. 259 



centre of science, never before equalled in Switzerland, 

 in connection with such a small town, such a limited 

 academy, and in so short a time. 



In order to understand what follows, it is necessary 

 to say a few words concerning the material difficulties 

 under which Agassiz laboured during his fourteen 

 years' residence at Neuchatel. His very small salary, 

 of eighty louis (Neuchatel currency), and a few years 

 later of one hundred and sixty louis, was hardly suffi- 

 cient to defray his household expenses, even if he had 

 limited them strictly to his family. But very soon he 

 largely increased all his expenditure, both for his pub- 

 lications and for his assistants. At first, his sister and 

 wife helped him, and his friend Louis de Coulon assisted 

 him in bibliographic work, and in collecting under his 

 direction. But when he became interested in glaciers 

 and the glacial question, it was too great a task for 

 his voluntary assistants, and, in addition, new duties 

 obliged Mrs. Agassiz to give up drawing and writ- 

 ing for her husband. If Agassiz was an indefat- 

 igable worker, when busied in the observation of 

 new facts, he was too impatient, and always carried 

 too far by new schemes, to write books, or even 

 memoirs. As he himself says, it was very difficult 

 for him to sit down at his desk and write all he had 

 observed and knew on a subject. "Je ne suis pas un 

 cul de plomb comme Richard Owen," the great English 

 palaeontologist. He always envied this faculty, so 

 strongly characteristic of Professor Owen. But it was 

 vain for him to try to acquire it, for he soon fretted, 

 was extremely nervous, and finally left the work to 



