MURRAY: ALEXANDER AGASSIZ. 141 



turned out a great financial success at a later date. Up to the time 

 of his death he was President of this successful company. 



In 1869 he had a severe illness at Cambridge from the effects of 

 over-work, anxiety and exposure at Calumet, from which it is believed 

 he never fully recovered. The years immediately preceding this 

 illness had been full of all the financial and other worries connected 

 with mine superintendence and the care of a large and growing busi- 

 ness. Still even at this busy period we find the dominant note of 

 Alexander Agassiz's life continuously sounded — the desire to add 

 to the sum of natural knowledge. 



As a boy he had accompanied his father on his cruise in the " Bibb " 

 off Nantucket, and in 1851 he aided in the survey of the Florida 

 Reefs. Before he had reached the age of thirty over twenty publica- 

 tions had appeared from his pen in various American scientific journals, 

 the subjects ranging from the flight of Lepidoptera and beaver dams 

 to the position of sandstones on the shores of Lake Superior, and 

 zoological classification. 



The great majority, however, of these papers deal with marine 

 organisms, such as Medusae, Salpae, Annelids, Actinae, Echinoderms, 

 and various pelagic larvae. These papers, as well as the fact that he 

 published in 1865, conjointly with his step-mother, Mrs. E. C. Agassiz, 

 a popular book on marine life entitled " Seaside Studies in Natural 

 History," show that even in his early career he was fascinated by the 

 ocean, its myriad inhabitants and their conditions of existence. It 

 could not well be otherwise, considering the intellectual atmosphere 

 by which he was surrounded. He took a keen interest in the explora- 

 tions of his friend, Pourtales, off the coasts of Florida, and assisted 

 in the description of his collections. In fact Agassiz's early manhood 

 coincided with the great renewal of interest in the physical and bio- 

 logical conditions of the great ocean basins. Maury and Brooke 

 had taught men how to sound correctly the deep sea, and Maury had 

 published his "Physical Geography of the Sea" and a depth chart of 

 the whole North Atlantic. Bailey had examined microscopically the 

 deep-sea deposits under the Gulf Stream; Pourtales had discussed 

 the formation of green-sand in the same deposits, and the older 

 Agassiz had pointed out the bearing of these new facts on the question 

 of the permanence of continents and ocean basins. The observations 

 of Loven and Michael Sars had shown that, if there was a zero of 

 life in the great oceans, it must lie at a much greater depth than 

 Forbes had indicated from his observations in the Mediterranean. 

 Wallich, Huxley, and Haeckel had expounded their views on the 



