LOUIS AGASSIZ. [CHAP. xvn. 



With the opening of the Museum came a new series 

 of pupils. Of the old ones only four remained, - 

 Alexander Agassiz, Theodore Lyman, H. J. Clark, and 

 F. W. Putnam. Alexander Agassiz had charge of all 

 the specimens kept in alcohol, of the exchanges, and 

 the business management of the Museum, --by no 

 means a sinecure. Henry J. Clark had been appointed 

 adjunct professor of zoology, and his time was mainly 

 occupied by his lectures and his microscopic embryo- 

 logical studies. F. W. Putnam was in charge of the col- 

 lection of fishes and vertebrates, and Theodore Lyman 

 worked at the Ophiuridae. 



The new set of pupils were remarkable for their 

 almost complete ignorance, not only of what a museum 

 of natural history is, but also of natural history itself. 

 To be sure, they all had a great desire to learn, and to 

 become naturalists, but they had not enough experience 

 to make them efficient as assistants in the work to which 

 they were specially detailed. On the whole, the person- 

 nel of the institution was rather crude ; and the collec- 

 tions which came from every corner of the world became 

 much confused, some being determined and well labelled, 

 others having no labels at all or very inadequate indi- 

 cations. No catalogue of any sort existed, and over all 

 there was a mind oscillating and hesitating as regards 

 classification ; for almost every three months, during 

 the first four years of the existence of the Museum, 

 some new idea was put forward by Agassiz, which 

 altered and more or less changed what he had 

 already proclaimed as a definite and immutable classi- 

 fication. 



