CHAPTER VII 



PENIKESE ISLAND — THE DEATH OF AGASSIZ 



1872-1873 



WHEN Agassiz returned to Cambridge in October, 

 187:2, he at once became involved in a project long 

 dear to his heart and matured by friends in his absence. 

 This was a plan for establishing a summer school of natural 

 history on the Massachusetts coast. When the Legislature 

 of Massachusetts made its annual visit to the Museum in 

 the following March, Agassiz presented a special plea for an 

 appropriation for the endowment of the projected school. 

 "Never did he plead more eloquently for the cause of edu- 

 cation," Mrs. Agassiz writes. "His gift as a speaker cannot 

 easily be described. It was born of conviction and was as 

 simple as it was impassioned." It should be said in passing 

 that these words of Mrs. Agassiz have an additional 

 interest if read in connection with the scene in the State 

 House twenty years later, described below in Chapter X, 

 when she appeared before the Legislature and pleaded suc- 

 cessfully for the charter of Radcliffe College with an elo- 

 quence that rested as truly as that of her more impas- 

 sioned husband on "conviction and simplicity." The report 

 of Agassiz's appeal that was published in the newspapers 

 aroused the interest of Mr. John Anderson of New York 

 and led him to make a gift of Penikese Island in Buzzard's 

 Bay on the coast of Massachusetts as a site for the pro- 

 posed school, together with an endowment fund of $50,000. 

 The school was organized in April, 1873, under the name 



