OF ARTS AND SCIENCES. 317 



Atlantic in the autumn of 1846, and made his dehut in the United 

 States as a lecturer. A new country brought a new life and a differ- 

 ent direction of energy. Hitherto Agassiz had been the brilliant dis- 

 coverer, now he was to be the explorer and the teacher. It is true 

 that the monographs he published during his American residence were 

 numerous, and worthy of his former fame ; yet they were not his dis- 

 tinguishing glory, as similar works had been in Neuchatel. So far 

 as natural science was concerned, he found a people untaught and a 

 country unexplored. He lectured, and was delighted at the interest he 

 created, and the spirit of reseai'ch that was roused. He fell to collect- 

 ing, and gathered specimens with all the glee of a boy who has a holi- 

 day in a fruit garden ; for Agassiz had to the full the boyish spirits 

 that oflen characterize men of enthusiasm. In 1847 Mr. Abbott Law- 

 rence, with the same judicious selection that M. Coulon had shown 

 fifteen years before, offered to found for Agassiz a professorship of 

 zoology and geology in the Scientific School at Harvard College. It 

 was then that he obtained an honorable discharge from his European 

 engagements, and fixed his abode in this country, where he could enjoy 

 a social power and a freedom such as are seldom accorded to scientific 

 men in the Old World. In 1848 he explored Lake Superior, and an 

 account of the observations there made was edited by Mr. J. Elliot 

 Cabot. At the request of Professor Bache of the Coast Survey, he 

 passed the winter of 1850 among the Florida reefs, where he deter- 

 mined the law of growth by which that peninsula has gradually ex- 

 tended southward by the successive formation of reefs, keys, and mud 

 flats. His stay at Charleston, S.C, led to his appointment, in 1852, to 

 the chair of Comparative Anatomy at the Medical College, which he 

 held for two terms, when a dangerous fever, brought on by exposure in 

 collecting, compelled him to give up the position. He published in 

 1853 a paper on the newly discovered viviparous fishes of California, 

 and he began also to turn his thoughts towards the elaboration of the 

 vast material he had collected in America. Perhaps he remembered 

 the little gymnasium in Switzerland and the great books that there 

 grew up, and feared his colleagues might grow impatient at his long 

 silence. The series of essays which he sketched was to be called 

 " Contributions to the Natural History of the United States," which he 

 hoj^ed to carry to ten volumes. Nothing better showed the popularity 

 of Agassiz than the subscription to this work, which reached 2,500 names. 

 Of the series, only four volumes were published, while a fifth was left 

 unfinished. They are : An Essay on Classification ; North American 

 Testudiuata ; the Embryology of Turtles ; and the Acalephs, under 



