Record. xli 



pathetic realization of the intentions of its founder. The 

 inscription on the wall of the entrance hall of the Museum — 



LUDOVICI AGASSIZ PATRI FILIUS ALEXANDER MDCCCLXXX 



— fittingly links the names of the two -men whose genius 

 and unselfish dedication of life and means have created and 

 established it. 



Son of a Swiss Protestant pastor, under whose immediate 

 tuition enriched by the daily example of a mother of rare in- 

 telligence and deep religious convictions he passed the first ten 

 years of his life, Agassiz's early training, like that of Cuvier, was 

 distinctively Calvinistic; to the fundamental tenet, of an all- 

 powerful and all-wise Creator, he held fast, as a vital conviction, 

 to the end of his life. In a letter to Humboldt (July, 1832) he 

 announced his own pregnant discovery "that the genetic suc- 

 cession of the fishes [in their geological sequence] corresponds 

 perfectly with their zoological classification." Karl Ernst v. 

 Baer had already (1828) shown that the embryos of higher ani- 

 mals pass through successive phases of development parallel to 

 those observed in lower animals of the same type. Having 

 demonstrated a like "parallelism between the embryological 

 development of the Cycloids and Ctenoids and the genetic or 

 palaeontological development of the whole class [of fishes]," 

 he saw in it a proof "that the same thought, the same plan, 

 which presides to7day over the formation of the embryo, is also 

 manifested in the successive development of the numerous 

 creatures which have formerly peopled the earth. . . . Phenom- 

 ena closely allied in the order of their succession, and yet without 

 sufficient cause in themselves for their appearance; an infinite 

 diversity of species without any common material bond, so 

 grouping themselves as to present the most admirable progressive 

 development to which our own species is linked, — are these not 

 incontestable proofs of the existence of a superior intelligence 

 whose power alone could have established such an order of 

 things? . . . More than fifteen hundred species of fossil fishes, 

 which I have learned to know, tell me that species do not pass 

 insensibly one into another, but that they appear unex- 

 pectedly, without direct relations to their precursors ; ... All 

 these species have a fixed epoch of appearance and disappear- 

 ance; their existence is even limited to an appointed time. 

 And yet they present, as a whole, numerous affinities more or 

 less close, a definite coordination in a given system of organization 

 which has intimate relations with the mode of existence of each 



