248 LOUIS AGASSIZ. [CHAP. x. 



lished his remarkable and scientifically very frank 

 paper, "Sketch of the Natural Provinces of the Ani- 

 mal World and their Relation to the Different Types 

 of Man," Cambridge, 1853. Agassiz was too good a 

 naturalist, too much accustomed to differentiate ani- 

 mals, to accept unity in the genus Homo, and when 

 converted to the views of Dr. Samuel Morton of Phila- 

 delphia on the different types and diversity of man, he 

 frankly proclaimed his change of opinion to the scien- 

 tific world, with the same earnestness with which eight 

 years previously he maintained the old creed of a unique 

 species ; and when, a few years later, he heard of the 

 discoveries of the fossil man of the Quaternary epoch, 

 he accepted it at once, delighted to learn that a man 

 was in existence and saw the great glaciers, of which he 

 was the first to conceive the existence before the present 

 epoch. 



I may add a personal reminiscence of the first time 

 I saw Agassiz, when I presented to him a letter of 

 introduction from his friend Jules Thurmann. He had 

 close by him on his desk a pile of copies of this notice 

 on the geography of animals, and taking one, he wrote 

 my name on the cover, and offered it to me. I have 

 ever kept that first gift of Agassiz followed by many 

 others, for he always from that time gave me all his 

 publications as a souvenir of one of the most fasci- 

 nating men I have met in my life ; for such was the 

 impression he made on me ; an impression which has 

 remained unimpaired, and indeed constantly deepened, 

 until the last day of his life. 



During 1845, the friendship which had existed for at 



