646 LOUIS AGASSIZ. 



TO SIR PHILIP DE GREY EGERTON. 



MUSEUM OF COMPARATIVE ZOOLOGY, 



CAMBRIDGE, MASS., March 26, 1867. 



... I know you will be pleased to hear 

 that I have returned to the study of fishes, 

 and that I am not likely to give it up again 

 for years to come. My success in collecting 

 in the Amazons has been so unexpected that 

 it will take me years to give an account of 

 what I have found, and I am bound to show 

 that the strange statements that have gone 

 abroad are strictly correct. Yes, I have about 

 eighteen hundred new species of fishes from 

 the basin of the Amazons ! The collection is 

 now in Cambridge, for the most part in good 

 preservation. It suggests at once the idea 

 that either the other rivers of the world have 

 been very indifferently explored, or that trop- 

 ical America nourishes a variety of animals 

 unknown to other regions. In this dilemma 

 it would be worth while to send some natural- 

 ist to investigate the Ganges or the Brarna- 

 putra, or some of the great Chinese rivers. 

 Can it not be done by order of the British 

 government ? 



Please send me whatever you may publish 

 upon the fossil fishes in your possession. I 



