i io LOUIS AGASSIZ. [CHAP. xvm. 



A few words on Chauncey Wright, and his singular 

 similarity to another adversary of Agassiz, Karl Schim- 

 per, will not be out of place. Chauncey Wright was a 

 mathematician of talent, who turned his mathematical 

 skill to a study of the phyllotaxis of plants, just as 

 Schimper had done forty years before. Agassiz treated 

 Wright in the most friendly way, even appointing him 

 a lecturer at his school for girls, just as he had treated 

 Karl Schimper. Wright was an earnest seeker for 

 truth, but he was above all a great dreamer, and some 

 of his writings are rather obscure. He was suffering 

 from the same weakness which afflicted Schimper, and 

 presents a rare parallel to him. As his biographer and 

 friend, Mr. Charles Eliot Norton, says, "He was never a 

 persistent and systematic student, but he was essentially 

 a persistent and systematic thinker ' (" Philosophical 

 Discussions," p. xvi., 1877; New York). 



Asa Gray " had no proper training in biological 

 science," Huxley says, and this was certainly true of 

 Chauncey Wright, and especially of John Fiske. All 

 three were ignorant of zoology, and it was almost comi- 

 cal to have Wright say, " Darwin's ' Origin of Species ' 

 renders Agassiz's essay on classification a useless and 

 mistaken speculation ; creation is a word pretending 

 knowledge and feigning reverence." 



In an address of Professor Asa Gray ! on Professor 

 Jeffries Wyman, we read, " I may venture to take the 



doubtful if he had ever read it, not being very proficient in the French 

 language. At all events, Gray's attention was not called to Lamarck's 

 work until after the publication of Darwin's " < )rigin of Species." 



'"Proceedings Boston Soc. Nat. History," Vol. XVII., p. 123. 

 1874. 



