ioo LOUIS AGASSIZ. [CHAP. xvn. 



ning of 1865. A regular secession occurred, and five 

 assistants left. One, Mr. Verrill, went to the Smith- 

 sonian and afterwards to Yale College; while the others, 

 Messrs. Putnam, Morse, Packard, and Hyatt, retired to 

 Salem, the county seat of Essex County, as a sort of 

 Mount Aventine, where George Peabody, an American 

 banker in London, had given a certain sum of money to 

 the Essex Institute and Peabody Academy of Science. 

 And around these Agassiz's four pupils collected, using 

 them as a base or citadel, from which they expected to 

 conquer the natural history of North America ; and for 

 this purpose they started a monthly magazine, "The 

 American Naturalist" and an agency for selling scien- 

 tific books and papers and for exchanging specimens. 

 After a few years of hard struggle the enterprise failed, 

 notwithstanding their residence among people whom 

 the novelist, W. D. Howells, satirically characterizes as 

 "a little above the salt of the earth." Two were glad 

 to return to Cambridge, one went to Brown Univer- 

 sity, Providence, while one has remained at Salem, 

 as curator of the Peabody Museum and of the Essex 

 Institute. The whole disagreement was a great mis- 

 take on both sides, but more especially on the part 

 of the pupils, who ought to have been, more patient 

 with their old professor. The crisis was brought on 

 by new regulations for the assistants of the Museum. 

 Agassi/, with justice, requested that no one connected 

 with the Museum as a regular assistant, or even as a 

 student-assistant, should work for himself in the Museum 

 during the hours fixed for Museum work. He contended 

 that persons were nothing, and that the Museum 



