66 LOUIS AGASSIZ. [CHAP. iv. 



tant work now on hand in the geological world " (" Life 

 and Letters of Sedgwick," Vol. I., p. 447, Cambridge, 

 1890). Agassiz wisely withdrew his very objectionable 

 paper. It was one of the weak points of his disposition 

 to indulge in wild suppositions on subjects of which he 

 knew very little, and to plunge into speculation abso- 

 lutely out of his range of research. 



It was on this occasion, at a festival at Florence 

 Court, the seat of Lord Enniskillen, that Enniskillen, 

 as it was related by his son, Lord Cole, to Lyell, was 

 put "in great good humour," for long time after, by 

 the perfect coolness with which Agassiz made " Murchi- 

 son and some other guest glorious, and Sedgwick com- 

 fortable" * Such a jolly set of hammer-bearers Lord 

 Enniskillen had never seen before, and Murchison 

 acknowledged that he had found in Agassiz his master. 

 At the hospitable table of Lord Enniskillen the old 

 Munich student proved a match for the old trooper of 

 the Peninsula War. 



Not long after his return to Neuchatel, a son, Alex- 

 ander, so named in honour of Agassiz's best friend, Alex- 

 ander Braun, was born on the ist of December, 1835. 

 For more than one reason it was a great event in the 

 family, for from that moment Mrs. Agassiz, who showed 

 herself at once an excellent and most careful mother, 

 entirely abandoned pencil and books, and devoted all 

 her time and strength to her son, and afterward to her 

 two daughters,- -one Ida, born Aug. 8, 1837; and tne 

 other, Pauline, born Feb. 8, 1841. 



1 " Life of Sir Charles Lyell," Vol. I., p. 457, and also " Life and Let- 

 ters of Sedgwick," Vol. I., p. 445. 



