1852-55-] HOUSE IN QUINCY STREET. 59 



and a quantity of volumes on the geology and palaeon- 

 tology of France and Italy. As I was on the eve of 

 an exploration from the Mississippi River to the Pacific 

 Ocean for the United States government, and expected 

 to be absent at least a year, Agassiz thought that he 

 might want to consult many of my books during my 

 long absence, and he therefore carried them to his 

 house. This shows also how scarce scientific books 

 were then in America. The few savants scattered 

 over New England were obliged to borrow from one 

 another the memoirs they wished to consult in their 

 work. Now with such rich libraries as we have at our 

 disposal, it seems hardly possible that only forty years 

 separate us from that time of difficulty in consulting all 

 the publications needed for a special study. Agassiz 

 was thinking of those times when, eight years later, 

 after he had gathered a valuable natural history library 

 at his museum, he generously offered to allow American 

 naturalists to borrow all the books they wanted. 



A larger house had become an absolute necessity ; 

 and accordingly Harvard College built one for him, on 

 a piece of its ground at the corner of Quincy and Har- 

 vard streets, just opposite the house of his friends, the 

 Feltons. He left the second Hotel des Neuchatelois 

 in Oxford Street during 1854, after a sojourn of seven 

 years ; and it may be said that Agassiz passed there 

 the happiest time of his life. For there he was freed 

 from that sort of nightmare which hung over him so 

 long, his abnormal and never well-defined association 

 with his secretary, Desor. There he received and lived 



