AGASSIZ AND DARWINISM. 693 



molished " (or words to that effect) " by Agassiz Himself ! " Whether 

 from accident or design, the type-setter's choice of Roman capitals 

 was very happy. Upon many readers the effect must have been tre- 

 mendous ; and quite possibly there may be some who, without further 

 investigation, will carry to their dying day the opinion that it is all 

 over with the Darwinian theory, since " Agassiz Himself" has re- 

 futed it. 



Upon me the effect was such as to make me lay down my paper 

 and ask myself : Can it be that we have, after all, a sort of scientific 

 pope among us ? Has it come to this, that the dicta of some one 

 "servant and interpreter of Nature" are to be accepted as final, even 

 against the better judgment of the majority of his compeers ? In 

 short, who is Agassiz himself, that he should thus single-handed 

 have demolished the stoutest edifice which observation and deduc- 

 tion have reared since the day when Newton built to such good pur- 

 pose? 



Prof. Agassiz is a naturalist who is justly world-renowned for his 

 achievements. His contributions to geology, to paleontology, and to 

 systematic zoology, have been such as to place him in a very high rank 

 among contemporary naturalists. Not quite in the highest place, I 

 should say ; for, apart from all questions of theory, it is probable that 

 Mr. Darwin's gigantic industry, his wonderful thoroughness and ac- 

 curacy as an observer, and his unrivalled fertility of suggestion, will 

 cause him in the future to be ranked along with Aristotle, Linnaeus, 

 and Cuvier ; and upon this high level we cannot place Prof. Agassiz. 

 Leaving Mr. Darwin out of the account, we may say that Prof. Agas- 

 siz stands in the first rank of contemporary naturalists. But any ex- 

 ceptional supremacy in this first rank can by no means be claimed for 

 him. Both for learning and for sagacity, the names of Gray, Wyman, 

 Huxley, Hooker, Wallace, Lubbock, Lyell, Vogt, Haeckel, and Gegen- 

 baur, are quite as illustrious as the name of Agassiz ; and we may 

 note, in passing, that these are the names of men who openly indorse 

 and defend the Darwinian theory. 



Possibly, however, there are some who will not be inclined to ac- 

 cept the estimates made in the foregoing paragraph. No doubt there 

 are many people in this country who have long accustomed themselves 

 to regard Prof. Agassiz not simply as one among a dozen or twenty 

 living naturalists of the highest rank, but as occupying a solitary po- 

 sition as the greatest of all living naturalists as a kind of second 

 Cuvier, for example. There is, to the popular eye, a halo about the 

 name of Agassiz which there is not about the name of Gray ; though, 

 if there is any man now living in America, of whom America might, 

 justly boast as her chief ornament and pride, so far as science is con- 

 cerned, that man is unquestionably Prof. Asa Gray. Now, this 

 greater popular fame of Agassiz is due to the fact that he is a Euro- 

 pean who cast in his lot with us at a time w T hen we were wont to over- 



