312 PROCEEDINGS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY 



often present at their discussions ; and when we met for conversation 

 or to give lectures among ourselves, as we constantly did, our pi-ofes- 

 sors were often among our listeners, cheering and stimulating us in all 

 our efforts after independent search. My room was our meeting place, 

 bed-room, study, museum, library, lecture-room, fencing-room, all in 

 one. Students and professors used to call it the Little Academy." It 

 was the opening genius of the young student of medicine that made his 

 poor chamber a little academy. This also it was that impelled Martins 

 to intrust to him, a youth of twenty-one, the description of the fishes 

 collected in Brazil by Spix, They were published in a grand folio in 

 1829, with a sounding Latin title : Selecta yenera et species pisckwi quos 

 collegit et pingendos curavit Dr. J. B. de Spix : digessit, descripsit, et 

 ohservatioidbus illustravit Dr. L. Agassiz. It will be seen that already 

 he was a doctor of philosophy, having taken the degree in 1829 ; and 

 he passed examinations for medicine and surgery, the following year. 

 Such was the reputation acquired through his book, that he found facil- 

 ities offered him on all sides. Cotta, the publisher, furnished funds 

 with which to support an artist. Fitzinger gave him free access to the 

 great collections of Vienna, whither he had repaired to study the 

 Danube fishes ; for ichthyology had, by the accident of Martius's patron- 

 age, become his leading study. Nor was it long before he pushed his 

 inquiries from the living to the fossil, and there opened before him that 

 vast field in which he was to gather so rich a harvest. In 1831 he 

 lived in Paris, and there acquired the warm friendship of Cuvier. 

 There, too, for the second time, he saw Humboldt, who became, and 

 ever remained, his wise counsellor and generous friend. 



With this episode ends the student life of Agassiz. He was about 

 to begin a profession which was one day to become an engrossing one, 

 and was never to be relinquished by him, — the profession of a teacher. 

 In 1832 he applied to M. Louis Coulon to obtain for him a position as 

 Professor of Natural History in the Gymnasium of Neuchatel. No 

 such chair then existed ; but M. Coulon raised enough money to guar- 

 antee for three years a salary of 2000 francs, and the new professor 

 was duly installed, already considering the best way of laying out so 

 considerable an annual sum as $400. He found no museum there, and 

 for lack of a lecture-room was obliged to give his course in a hall of 

 the town-house. But this ill-provided teacher soon brought his branch 

 to overshadow all others in tlie gymnasium. He sent for the speci- 

 mens he had amassed in Germany, and with ceaseless activity added 

 fresh ones, until a tolerable collection was ready for display and study. 

 Then, with the confidence of a man having abundant resources in money 



