1832-35-] ESTABLISHMENT AT NEUCHATEL, 51 



sions at different periods of his life. But insufficiency 

 of means, resulting from his want of business capacity, 

 assailed him from the first moment of his arrival in 

 Neuchatel. As to its being a stepping-stone to a posi- 

 tion at Berlin, that expectation was never realized ; all 

 prospects in that direction having been entirely barred, 

 as we shall see, by the part he took in the glacial ques- 

 tion five years later. 



A college in a small town of five or six thousand 

 inhabitants, like Neuchatel in 1832, and after the 

 political and very grave disturbances which occurred 

 there in 1831, as a consequence of the French Revolu- 

 tion of July, 1830, was, of necessity, a very limited 

 institution. The number of pupils, all told, was 

 below one hundred ; and there were absolutely no ma- 

 terials for study, no collections, not even a room to be 

 used for the new class. Agassiz was obliged to deliver 

 his lectures at the City Hall, in the room of the tribunal 

 of the justice of the peace. With his impetuous and 

 optimistic spirit and his impulsive nature, he went to 

 work, and, without losing a minute, he undertook to 

 form a centre of scientific culture with the rather scanty 

 and rough material at his disposal. With the help of 

 the two Louis de Coulons, father and son, - - two of the 

 most devoted, and, at the same time, most modest nat- 

 uralists, - - Agassiz arranged a provisional museum in 

 the Orphans' Home, bringing there the already numer- 

 ous specimens of natural history collected by himself in 

 Germany, Switzerland, and France. 



Less than a month after his arrival and the deliv- 

 ery of his inaugural lecture, " Upon the Relations 



