COURSES OF STUDY. 19 



of a book from which he can learn much more about 

 fishes than from any volume that ever before found its 

 way into his village. How he is encouraged by this 

 graceful sympathy ! He hoards his earnings till the 

 book is bought. He studies it by candlelight after 

 the chores are done. He masters it, and presents it 

 to his little society, where it becomes the nucleus of a 

 scientific library, which ten years from now may re- 

 quire a building to protect it. By the time this boy 

 has finished school he knows more about the fish in 

 the local waters than his parents or instructors, and 

 he has become fired with ambition to go to some place 

 where he can meet men who know enough to teach 

 him more. He enters a college or higher scientific 

 school, and becomes, before many years are gone, 

 himself a specialist, ready, nay eager, to help other 

 poor boys in other isolated places. This is no fancy 

 sketch, but has been realized over and over again since 

 the Agassiz Association was founded in 1875. 



SPECIAL CLASSES. 



Among the pleasant features of the A. A. have been 

 our special courses of study. These have been con- 

 ducted by men high in their departments, and have 

 always been free. Dr. Marcus E. Jones, of Salt Lake 

 City, has taken a class through elementary botany ; 

 Prof. G. Howard Parker has directed a six-months' 

 course in entomology ; Prof. E. L. French, of Wells 

 College, has managed a very successful course of 

 botanical collecting and exchange ; and Prof. W. O. 

 Crosby, of the Boston Society of Natural History, has 

 conducted two classes, each of one hundred and fifty 

 pupils, through highly interesting courses in the ele- 

 ments of determinative mineralogy. All these gentle- 

 men have most generously volunteered their services, 

 and we cannot but hope that others will be found to 



