1 843-44-] HOSPITALITY AT NEUCHATEL. 221 



Christmas time, during the snowy season, savants from 

 every part of Switzerland, from Bale, Zurich, Berne, 

 Geneva, etc., and at a time when travelling was not 

 easy, as it is now, with railroads in every direction. 

 Nothing shows better that Agassiz was an accepted 

 leader among the scientific men of Switzerland. 



The year 1844 was a sad year with Agassiz. We 

 must turn back a few years in order to understand the 

 state of affairs, and how, little by little, he jeoparded 

 his position by a complete incapacity to manage his 

 assistants, his many employees, and his too numerous 

 undertakings. Too great familiarity with his assistants, 

 and inability to keep them at respectful distance, re- 

 sulted in his having no authority over them. If Agassiz 

 was a genius in natural history, in private life he was 

 entirely unable to manage his immediate surroundings. 

 Speaking of Agassiz's establishment at Neuchatel, Karl 

 Vogt says : " It was a scientific factory with a com- 

 munity of property ; only, unhappily, neither the num- 

 ber of workmen nor the capital engaged was sufficient 

 and in proportion to the production." It was also an 

 overworked establishment. Agassiz, as its director, had 

 to provide everything ; first the money, for all were 

 penniless ; and the life they led, though without luxury, 

 was, after all, rather expensive ; for to travel all over 

 Switzerland, to stay at the "Hotel des Neuchatelois," to 

 keep open house at Neuchatel not only for his assist- 

 ants, but also for all the naturalists who were continually 

 coming from every part of Europe, required a constant 

 expenditure of no small amount of money. Besides the 

 work of providing the money, Agassiz had an oversight 



