My experience with Mr. Alexander Agassiz, with regard to this col- 

 lection, was extremely interesting. One of his assistants told me that Mr. 

 Agassiz was expecting a request from me to be allowed to take the col- 

 lection away with me and had determined to refuse, but that the line 

 of attack which I opened took him completely by surprise and led to 

 immediate surrender. I said: "Mr. Agassiz, that's a beautiful collection 

 that Garman made in the White River; it contains a lot of important 

 things that ought to be figured and described and it's a great pity to let 

 it lie about unutilized. Osborn and I will be delighted to prepare a full 

 report upon it, if you will entrust it to us." He had not beUeved that the 

 collection was important and was very much pleased by my opinion of 

 it. He offered to publish promptly anything that we might get ready. 



The year 1887 was filled with interesting work. We spent the summer 

 in Princeton and no expedition was undertaken. Of this reUef I was glad 

 and not only on personal grounds, for I did not wish to gather more 

 fossils until those which we already had, those gathered by the parties of 

 '85 and '86 and the Garman collection from Harvard, should have been 

 prepared and published. There was ample work to do and I was quite 

 willing to wait before striking out into new fields. 



The great event of the year was the building of my Mother's house in 

 Bayard Lane, which was destined to be our home for thirty years; it was 

 begun in the autumn of 1887 and finished the following spring. The 

 architect was Page Brown, who designed the central part of the art 

 museum and Whig and Clio Halls. Shortly afterward, he moved to San 

 Francisco and was there killed by a fall from his horse. 



In the interests of the joint work upon which Osborn and I were en- 

 gaged, it became necessary for me to study the great collections of fossil 

 mammals in Europe, especially the museums of London, Paris and 

 Munich. Accordingly, I made arrangements for a leave of absence from 

 April to October 1888. Mrs. Post, my Wife's mother, and two young 

 cousins, the Misses Conover and Stockton, we were glad to have with 

 us. My Wife and children were to go to Heidelberg and live with our 

 dear friends, the Frauleins Lang, while the rest of us were off on our 

 travels. We concluded our preparations long in advance, the saiUng date 

 to be April 14. Before that long-expected day, however, there were some 

 highly important occurrences. 



Dr. McCosh had resigned the presidency, his resignation to take effect 

 at the Commencement of 1888. The question of his successor was, of 

 course, of the liveliest interest to all Princetonians and, immediately, there 

 arose two parties among the Trustees and alumni. One party, to which 



C 202 ;] 



