xxxvi Trans. Acad. Sci. of St. Louis. 



was on the same general subject. He lectured wholly without 

 notes, from fullness of perfectly assimilated knowledge presented 

 with an impressive earnestness attesting his own supreme con- 

 viction of the truth and importance of his message. The pres- 

 ence of an audience, large or small, was an unfailing stimulus to 

 the exercise of his best powers, but the full current of thought 

 and speech was controlled and regulated by his native and 

 assiduously cultivated faculty of concentration. He awakened 

 in this country a general interest in nature-study such as had 

 never before and has not since been inspired b}'^ a public teacher. 

 The income from his lectures went far to supply the means neces- 

 sary for the prosecution of his scientific work in America, but 

 not without heavy cost of time and strength, 



A passion for collecting natural objects possessed Agassiz as 

 a boy. In his native Swiss village of Motier, on the little Lake 

 of Morat a few miles east of the north-eastern end of Lake 

 Neuchatel, with a younger brother, Auguste, as his inseparable 

 companion, the two lads passed many pleasant hours with the 

 fishermen, learning the mysteries of their craft and supplementing 

 them by new devices of their own. They learned the habits of 

 the fishes in their native haunts, and watched them in captivity 

 in a large stone basin fed by running water, which served them 

 for a vivarium. At school at Bienne (Biel), they "hunted the 

 woods and meadows for birds, insects, and land and fresh-water 

 shells," "reared butterflies from caterpillars," and added to 

 their collections. At the age of fourteen the desire to become a 

 great naturalist had taken form, as is shown by a list of desid- 

 erata drawn up at Bienne, in which he projected an extended 

 course of study forecasting, in the main, the programme to 

 which he held through the years of preparation for his life work. 

 At the Academie of Lausanne, at the medical school in Ziirich, 

 at the Lliniversities of Heidelberg and Munich, and in Paris, at 

 the Museum of Natural History, he pressed unswervingly toward 

 the gioal of his ambition, improving the varied opportunities for 

 culture offered in collateral fields, but holding all subservient to 

 his main purpose. In deference to parental wishes and con- 

 trolling family opinion, he studied meilicine, and graduated 

 (M.D., Munich, 1830) with distinction; but of th(; medical 

 courses those on anatomy and physiology engrossed his chief 

 attention. He was deeply interested in the philosophical 

 courses of Schelling, in whose lectures he recognized a far saner 

 interpretation of nature than in the brilliant and fascinating 



