io8 LOUrS AGASSfZ. [CHAP. xvm. 



lecturer, was a poor debater. While Cuvier always 

 kept cool and carefully selected every word he used, 

 Agassiz, on the contrary, quickly lost patience, became 

 excited, and showed signs of vexation. It should be 

 said, however, that this was not the case with Agassiz 

 until after he was fifty years old. I remember to have 

 seen him very cool and under perfect self-control in 

 several of the discussions on the glacial theory before 



/ 



von Buch, Elie de Beaumont, and other adversaries of 

 his glacier theory, who on their part to a greater or less 

 degree lost their tempers. At the meetings of the 

 American Academy of Sciences and of the Natural 

 History Society of Boston in 1860, objections against 

 the acceptation of Darwin's theory led to several debates 

 between him and Asa Gray and William B. Rogers, in 

 which he was defeated, although he was right in all 

 the facts he advanced to sustain his views and opinions. 

 Some of his antagonists were excellent debaters and 

 skilled in interrupting; and they annoyed him constantly 

 by shaking their heads, or even saying a few words aloud, 

 which disconcerted him and produced a painful impres- 

 sion. His opponents have reproached him for taking all 

 that they said as directed against him personally when 

 they were only making objections to his arguments and 

 the views he expressed and defended. Probably the 

 reproach is just, to a certain extent; but that Agassiz 

 should take it as a personal opposition is easy to under- 

 stand, and was at least partly authorized by certain 

 facts. His great success and popularity in America 

 had arrayed against him almost all the American natu- 

 ralists, with very few exceptions. Even his position at 



