1827-31.] LIFE AT CONCISE. 33 



tery jars, easily seen at the bottom through the trans- 

 parent blue water, an amusement the young men of 

 Concise were somewhat addicted to. How little Agassiz 

 then thought that he was doing the work of a true bar- 

 barian, destroying pottery utensils which had belonged 

 to his ancestors, the -lake-dwellers of prehistoric time ! 

 After the discoveries of Keller at the Zurich Lake, 

 Agassiz, remembering what he did in 1831 on the Lake 

 of Neuchatel, exclaimed : " How foolish I was ! Dinkel 

 and I have in sport broken dozens of important prehis- 

 toric pieces of pottery." 



Almost a year of good work was passed at home, with 

 nothing to disturb him, writing his " Poissons fossiles ' 

 and directing Dinkel's drawings. It was a great change 

 after his rather boisterous student life at Munich. His 

 habitual audience of fifteen or twenty persons, meeting 

 daily in his room, and called the " Little Academy " by 

 common consent, by both students and professors, was 

 now reduced to Dinkel and his own family circle, with 

 a few friends, relatives, and old acquaintances, who 

 came in now and then, and were rather surprised, but 

 unable to appreciate the work in which Louis was so 

 deeply engaged. 



Finally, the attraction of Paris proved too great, and 

 to Paris he resolved to go, a determination which he 

 found not easy to carry into effect. 



He had exhausted the paternal purse, and money 

 was difficult to secure. At this critical moment came 

 assistance, which was prompted entirely by friendly 

 admiration and confidence in his future. An old friend 

 of his father, a pastor of the Canton de Vaud, M. 



D 



