212 LOUIS AGASSIZ. [CHAP. ix. 



noissance de cause." For this reason, I have chosen to 

 quote what Jules Pictet de la Rive says of it in his arti- 

 cle, "Agassiz" ("Album de la Suisse Romane," 5^ me 

 vol., Geneva, 1847), Pictet had made a special study 

 of fossil and living fishes, and his intimacy with and 

 admiration for Agassiz never relaxed during his whole 

 life. Independent by character and possessing a large 

 fortune, Pictet's opinions are properly considered just 

 and unbiassed. 



" The ' Recherches sur les Poissons fossiles,' says 

 Pictet, " was one of the first conceptions of Agassiz, and 

 form to-day his most substantial title to renown. It is 

 in this beautiful work that the immanent qualities of 

 our learned palaeontologist shine more specially and 

 that his rich imagination has full play, although always 

 guided by a sagacious and well-balanced judgment based 

 on conscientious researches and on a minute analysis 

 of even the smallest parts of the organism. 



" The limits of this article do not allow us to give 

 a complete idea of the work, which is composed of five 

 quarto volumes and a folio atlas of almost four hundred 

 plates. We shall only try to set forth the aim, the 

 plan, and the most important results. 



" We know that when Cuvier published his first works 

 on the fossils his principal aim was to demonstrate that 

 the species destroyed by the revolutions of the globe 

 and preserved as fossils are different from those living 

 now on our continents and in our seas. That truth has 

 to-day become unquestionable, and new discoveries have 

 shown by the most undeniable evidence, that there 

 have been in the history of the earth a series of epochs 



