268 LOUIS AGASSIZ. [CHAP. XL 



and after looking at the label of the barrel, he would 

 sometimes exclaim, " Why ! it was collected by Ouoy 

 and Gaimard, or by Humbron, or some one else, on the 

 shore of Tasmania or New Zealand, during the voyage 

 round the world of de Freycinet, or Dupere, or Dumont 

 d'Urville," etc. Happiness beamed on his face ; and 

 satisfaction was seen in every movement, exclamation, 

 and posture. What an admirer of natural history 

 objects! It was impossible to resist feeling interest in 

 his work. He excited the curiosity of every one in the 

 gallery, and even the guardians and porters were deeply 

 affected and attracted around the professor. The guar- 

 dian, or janitor, named Philippe Pothau, so well known 

 by all zoologists who have studied, or even only passed 

 through the collections of the Jardin des Plantes, was 

 in ecstasy and rapture before Agassiz. He was 

 not accustomed to see such enthusiasm, Valenciennes 

 being the most prosaic and unmovable of men, and all 

 the other professors of the Jardin des Plantes being 

 either very sceptical, or too busy to pay much attention 

 to the treasures under their guardianship. 



The private collections at Paris were then more 

 numerous and more important than at the present 

 time. The impulse given to the study of palaeontol- 

 ogy and geology by Cuvier and his school had not yet 

 died out. His principal collaborator Alexandre Bron- 

 gniart was still alive ; and on two successive Sundays he 

 himself exhibited to Agassiz his fine collection of fossil 

 echinoderms, some of which were the types described 

 by Lamarck and himself in his celebrated " Geologic 

 des Environs de Paris." Defrance, one of the ablest 



