722 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



lie worked with wonderful zeal, which showed its results in the 

 success of everything with which he had to do. 



Of the older teachers of biology in America, the men who were 

 born between 1830 and 1850, nearly all who have reached emi- 

 nence have been at one time or another pupils of Agassiz. The 

 names of Le Conte, Hartt, Shaler, Scudder, Wilder, Putnam, 

 Packard, Clark, Alexander Agassiz, Morse, Lyman, Brooks, Whit- 

 man, Garman, Faxon, Fewkes, Minot, and many others not less 

 worthily known, come to our thoughts at once as evidence of this 

 statement. 



Even as late as 1873, when Agassiz died, the Museum of Com- 

 parative Zoology was almost the only school in America where 

 the eager student of natural history could find the work he 

 wanted. The colleges generally taught only the elements of any 

 of the sciences. Twenty years ago original research was scarcely 

 considered as among the functions of the American college. Such 

 investigators as America had were for the most part outside of 

 the colleges, or at the best carrying on their investigations in time 

 stolen from the drudgery of the class-room. One of the greatest 

 of American astronomers was kept for forty years teaching alge- 

 bra and geometry, with never a student far enough advanced to 

 realize the real work of his teacher. And this case was typical 

 of hundreds before the university spirit was kindled in American 

 schools. That this spirit was kindled in Harvard forty years ago 

 was due in the greatest measure to Agassiz's influence. It was 

 here that graduate instruction in science in America practically 

 began. In an important sense the Museum of Comparative Zoolo- 

 gy was the first American university. 



Notwithstanding the great usefulness of the museum and the 

 broad influence of its teachers, Agassiz was not fully satisfied. 

 The audience he reached was still too small. Throughout the 

 country the great body of teachers of science went on in the old 

 mechanical way. On these he was able to exert no influence. 

 The boys and girls still kept up the humdrum recitations from 

 worthless text-books. They got their lessons from the book, re- 

 cited them from memory, and no more came into contact with 

 Nature than they would if no animals or plants or rocks existed 

 on this side of the planet Jupiter. 



It was to remedy this state of things that Agassiz conceived, 

 in 1872, the idea of a scientific " camp-meeting," where the workers 

 and the teachers might meet together — a summer school of obser- 

 vation where the teachers should be trained to see Nature for 

 themselves and teach others how to see it. 



The first plan suggested was that of calling the teachers of the 

 country together for a summer outing on the island of Nantucket. 

 Before the site was chosen, Mr. John Anderson, a wealthy tobacco 



