130 LOUIS AGASSIZ. [i HAP. xix. 



up in blankets on fir boughs. Game and fish were 

 abundant, and the fare good. Longfellow had declined 

 point blank to go, because Ralph Waldo Emerson, 

 whose mind was always wandering among the temples 

 of Greece and Rome, and seldom concerned with reality, 

 had taken a gun. When asked why he refused to join 

 them, Longfellow's ready answer was, because "some- 

 body will be shot." However, nothing was shot, except 

 deer. 



It was the custom at the " philosophers' camp" every 

 morning after breakfast to practise firing at a mark, 

 during which time Agassiz, Wyman, and an assistant 

 would dissect and prepare their specimens. One day 

 some one asked Agassiz to shoot at the mark; and on 

 his hesitating to accept the offer of a rifle, the whole 

 company joined in the request, urging that a man with 

 such eyes must be a capital shot. Not one of them 

 knew or imagined that Agassiz had never fired a shot 

 in his life. Finally Agassiz took aim, fired, and put 

 the ball in the eye of the mark, which gave occasion 

 for much applause and many compliments. Further 

 solicitations found him immovable, and he firmly de- 

 clined to fire another shot. He had been too lucky to 

 try again, and this was actually the only shot he ever 

 fired. 1 



1 In a letter to Cuvier, written about 1827, Agassiz mentions that he 

 "practised arms, the bayonet and sabre exercise" (Mrs. Agassiz's "Life 

 and Correspondence of Louis Agassiz," Vol. I., p. 108), which seems to 

 indicate that he then used a gun. But it was not so. William Schimprr, 

 the brother of Karl, when he joined Agassiz at Munich, had just left the 

 Radcn military service as a non-commissioned officer; and he drilled 

 Agassiz in the use of a gun, without firing it. Agassiz always declinol to 

 lire a shot, and would give no reason for his refusal. 



