THE 



POPULAR SCIEITOE 

 MONTHLY. 



APRIL, 1892. 



AGASSIZ AT PENIKESE. 



Bt Peof. DAVID STAER JOEDAN, 



PRESIDENT OF THE LELAND STANFOED JUiaOE UNIVEESITT. 



AGASSIZ was above all else a teaclier. His mission in Amer- 

 ica was that of a teaclier of science — of science in the broad- 

 est sense as the orderly arrangement of all human knowledge. 

 He would teach men to know, not simply to remember or to 

 guess. He believed that men in all walks of life would be more 

 useful and more successful through the thorough development of 

 the powers of observation and judgment. He would have the 

 student trained through contact with real things, not merely ex- 

 ercised in the recollection of the book descriptions of things. 

 " If you study Nature in books/' he said, " when you go out of 

 doors you can not find her." 



Agassiz was once asked to write a text-book in zoology for the 

 use of schools and colleges. Of this he said : " I told the publish- 

 ers that I was not the man to do that sort of thing, and I told 

 them, too, that the less of that sort of thing which is done the 

 better. It is not school-books we want, it is students. The book 

 of Nature is always open, and all that I can do or say shall be to ■ 

 lead young people to study that book, and not to pin their faith to 

 any other." 



He taught natural history in Harvard College as no other man 

 had taught in America before. He was "the best friend' that 

 ever student had," because the most genial and kindly. Camr 

 bridge people used to say that one had " less need of an overcoat 

 in passing Agassiz's house " than any other in that city. 



In the interest of popular education as well as of scientific re- 

 search-, Agassiz laid the foundation of the Museum of Compara- 

 tive Zoology. Here, in the face of all sorts of discouragements, 



TOL. XL. 49 



