xxiv.] HIS VERSATILITY. 225 



the horizon, believing that it has remained motionless, 

 pointing all the time in the same direction." 



These two diametrically opposed views are both exag- 

 gerated. The truth lies between them. Agassiz was 

 capricious in the extreme, very versatile, attracted easily 

 by any new object or subject; and he had the faculty 

 of almost completely forgetting works half done or 

 only sketched. He lacked persistence and steadiness 

 at work requiring long and difficult observations. Like 

 a splendid butterfly, he flew from one delight to another. 

 But to compare Agassiz to a weathercock or a piece of 

 wax is a great mistake. When his opinion was formed 

 on a subject, it was impossible to move him. He would 

 listen to all the objections, assent more or less to what 

 was said, but in the end do only what he wanted to do. 

 That something sternly practical mingled with Agassiz's 

 habitual idealism was well proved by his Museum. He 

 did not carry it out entirely, as he proposed to do at the 

 start; but had he lived twenty years longer, his ideal 

 Museum would have become a reality. 



He began and abandoned successively many subjects. 

 For instance, after the publication of his " Poissons 

 fossiles " and the " Poissons du vieux gres rouges ou 

 systeme Devonien " -that is to say, after 1844 --he 

 never took up the subject again, with the single ex- 

 ception of the study of a few fossil teeth, collected 

 in California, and described in Vol. V. of the " Pacific 

 Railroad Explorations"; (Washington, 1856). He 

 never returned to the glacier of the Aar after his 

 hurried visit in 1845. Fossiles echinoderms were also 



1 " Ecluanl Desor, LebensbilJ eines Naturforschers," p. 18. 

 VOL. II. Q 



