772 LOUIS AGASSIZ. 



with so much anxiety, passed off, unclouded 

 by any untoward accident, and at evening the 

 guests had departed. Students and teachers, 

 a company of some fifty or sixty persons, were 

 left to share the island with the sea-gulls 

 whose haunt it was. 



We will not enter into the daily details of 

 the school. It was a new phase of teaching, 

 even for Agassiz, old as he was in the work. 

 Most of his pupils were mature men and wo- 

 men, some of whom had been teachers them- 

 selves for many years. He had, therefore, 

 trained minds to deal with, and the experience 

 was at that time as novel as it was interest- 

 ing. The novelty has worn off now. Summer 

 schools for advanced students, and especially 

 for teachers, have taken their place in the 

 general system of education ; and, though the 

 Penikese school may be said to have died with 

 its master, it lives anew in many a sea-side 

 laboratory organized on the same plan, in sum- 

 mer schools of Botany and field classes of Ge- 

 ology. The impetus it gave was not, and can- 

 not be, lost, since it refreshed and vitalized 

 methods of teaching. 



Beside the young men who formed his corps 

 of teachers, among whom the resident profes- 

 sors were Dr. Burt G. Wilder, of Cornell Uni- 



