The Life and Writings of Agassiz. 15 



recollect, with pleasure, the impression produced by his visit 

 on the naturalists of the United Kingdom. Several universi- 

 ties were desirous of numbering him among their professors* 

 and the cities of Edinburgh and Dublin, besides conferring 

 on him the degree of LL.D., enrolled him also among their 

 citizens. We learn that his personal influence induced se- 

 veral persons of high rank to engage in the study of Natural 

 History — among others, Sir Philip Egerton, and Lord Ennis- 

 killen, whose collections are known to all pala3ontologists. 

 He became intimate with the most influential persons in the 

 kingdom ; he was the welcome guest of Sir Robert Peel and 

 Lord Egerton, and the friend of Buckland, Owen, Murchison, 

 and other distinguished English naturalists. 



Having obtained from the study of Fossil Fishes results so 

 important to the history of the development of the whole 

 creation, Agassiz naturally sought to confirm them by the 

 study of other classes of animals, and accordingly applied 

 himself to the examination of the Mollusca and the Echino- 

 dermata. The latter had been, in general, somewhat neglect- 

 ed by naturalists; the fossil species, in particular, were 

 scarcely known, although from their great variety, and the 

 complicated structure of their shells, they are of great im- 

 portance in determining the age of various deposits. 



In a short time he had collected a considerable number of 

 sj^ecies, belonging to various public and private collections 

 throughout Europe, and in 1836, he published, in the first 

 volume of the Memoires de la Societe des Sciences NaHirelles 

 de NeuchdteU a Prodromus of the class Echinodermata — the 

 principles of which have since been generally adopted. The 

 same volume contains another paper, giving descriptions and 

 figures of the fossil Echini belonging to the Neocomian group* 

 of the Neufchatel Jura. A year afterwards, he publish- 

 ed, in another periodical {Memoires de la Societe Helve- 

 tique), descriptions of the fossil Echini peculiar to Switzer- 

 land. In the same year appeared the first number of a more 

 extensive work, having the title of '* Monographies d' Echi- 



* A formation belonging to the lower greensand, near Neufchatel, from the 

 Latin name of which city it derives its name. 



