WALCOTT. — ALEXANDER AGASSIZ. 39 



in the medical instruction offered by the University. He took a 

 generous part in many of the subscriptions for the general purposes 

 of the College. He witnessed with interest the development of the 

 collections of the Arnold Arboretum under auspices not unlike those 

 with which he was himself so familiar. The members of his College 

 class have given expression to their warm feelings of friendship for 

 one who never forgot his college associates and had a genuine pleasure 

 in all his meetings with them. 



The secretary of the class closes a feeling notice of Agassiz's death 

 with these words of appreciation, " No one of the class will miss him 

 more than the secretary does who never went to him in vain for aid 

 in the many common undertakings which bound the class together." 



He did not forget his early debt to the public schools of Cambridge 

 and willingly accepted service upon the school committee, and while 

 a member of that body devoted all his special knowledge to the 

 service of the city. This appears to be the only public office, subject 

 to election by the people, which he at any time held. 



Agassiz was elected a member of the Academy of Arts and Sciences 

 Nov. 12, 1862, he was then in his twenty-eighth year. It was 

 possibly in remembrance of this early election that he suggested in 

 his last note to President Trowbridge the propriety of bringing in to 

 this association a larger number of the younger scientific men than had 

 hitherto been customary. He presented his first paper the next year 

 and made in all thirteen communications, generally upon special sub- 

 jects in zoology, A very interesting account of his work at Lake 

 Titicaca is an exception, and has an added claim to our attention 

 from the fact that it was made at a time when the death of his wife 

 had left him disconsolate, but it is also an evidence of how resolutely 

 he turned again to the occupations which he followed to the end. 



The series of publications put forth by the Museum of Comparative 

 Zoology received the records of his scientific labors after the date 

 of the last communication made to the Academy. When President 

 Cooke died in the summer of 1894, a feeling soon became manifest 

 that Agassiz was the most fit member for the succession. The Vice- 

 President of that year was Augustus Lowell and he was the prompt 

 and enthusiastic leader in the preliminaries usual to an election. 

 Agassiz as might have been expected was very reluctant to allow the 

 use of his name and probably would not have done so, but for the 

 insistence of Mr. Lowell, whose influence was all the greater from the 

 fact that he was one of the earliest friends acquired by Agassiz when 

 he landed a stranger among people speaking an unknown tongue. 



