xvi EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION 



Agassiz decided to make America his permanent home. Comfortably 

 established as professor of zoology and geology at the Lawrence Sci- 

 entific School of Harvard University by 1847, Agassiz welcomed in 

 equal measure the adulation of Ohio fishermen and the good will of 

 poets like Longfellow and Lowell. His dedication to national cultural 

 progress was time and again evident as he spurned offers to return 

 to the continent of his birth. He repaid his admiring New World 

 public by extolling the grandeur of the natural environment and 

 boasting of America's ability to equal and even surpass the intellec- 

 tual achievements of Europe. Agassiz lent his own prestige to em- 

 phasis on the need for professional standards in science and the im- 

 portance of public support for scholarly endeavor. He played a major 

 role in the organization of the American Association for the Ad- 

 vancement of Science, acted to improve the character of higher 

 education in the sciences, and strove to create new institutions for 

 research and instruction. One notable achievement was the establish- 

 ment of the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard College 

 in 1859, the direct result of years of public pleading by Agassiz and 

 of his magical ability to raise money for science from private bene- 

 factors and governmental bodies. Such involvement in the social 

 relations of science made Agassiz a commanding figure in American 

 culture. He was ambitious, energetic, and dedicated; his private goals 

 were public aims, and his drives reflected the ambitions of America 

 in the exciting religion of cultural progress that characterized the 

 decades before the Civil War. Understandably, Emerson was one of 

 Agassiz's greatest admirers, applauding the nobility of his cultural 

 purposes, the virtue of his social democracy, and the validity of his 

 natural religion. 



The planning and execution of the Contributions to the Natural 

 History of the United States and its prefatory Essay on Classification 

 were primary examples of the advantages and the penalties of Agas- 

 siz's role in American society. From his first days in the New World 

 he had been fascinated with the rich, and as yet barely described, 

 natural history of America. Between 1846 and 1854 he had imder- 

 taken a number of exploratory journeys through the eastern sea- 

 board states, the deep South, to the White Moimtains, to the Lake 

 Superior region, and up the Mississippi valley. In these he had gar- 



