i 4 LOUIS AGASSIZ. [CHAP. i. 



come a naturalist; and, as the only way of accomplishing 

 this, he asked his father to let him study medicine, his 

 ambition at that time being to become a country doctor, 

 with full time and opportunity to study the natural his- 

 tory of the Canton de Vaud. 



Agassiz was a rather precocious young man ; and 

 coming to the age of manhood, he was at once a great 

 admirer of the fair sex. It had always been a charac- 

 teristic of the Agassiz family, well known among their 

 kin of the Canton de Vaud; and Mrs. Rose Agassiz, 

 who knew the family better than any one, and was 

 always of a practical and far-seeing turn of mind, 

 as far back as January, 1828, in one of her letters 

 to Louis, says : " The sooner you have finished your 

 studies, the sooner you can put up your tent, catch 

 your blue butterfly, and metamorphose her into a lov- 

 ing housewife." 1 The unusual case of the old pastor 

 Rudolphe, the grandfather of Louis, who married a 

 second time at the ripe age of sixty-six years, was much 

 commented upon at the time in the commonwealth. 



In 1824 Louis went to the University of Zurich to 

 pursue the medical course and prepare to become a 

 doctor. Zurich was an old centre of culture, and he 

 found there genial surroundings. The professor of 

 natural history, Schinz, at once saw the rare qualifica- 

 tions of Agassiz to become a naturalist, and gave him 

 every opportunity for the study of ornithology, which 

 was his favourite branch. At Lausanne, although a 

 very brilliant student, he was not so much above his 



1 " Louis Agassiz," by Mrs. E. C. Agussiz, Vol. I., p. 62. 



