AGASSIZ AT PEN IKE SE. 723 



mercliant in New York city, offered to Agassiz the use of his isl- 

 and of Penikese, together with a large yacht and an endowment 

 of fifty thousand dollars in money, if he would permanently lo- 

 cate this scientific "camp-meeting" on the island. Thus was 

 founded the Anderson School of Natural History on the island 

 of Penikese. 



Penikese is a little island containing about sixty acres of very 

 rocky ground, a pile of stones, with intervals of soil. It is the 

 last and least of the Elizabeth Islands, lying to the south of Buz- 

 zard's Bay, on the south coast of Massachusetts. The whole clus- 

 ter was once a great terminal moraine of rocks and rubbish of 

 all sorts, brought down from the mainland by some ancient gla- 

 cier, and by it dropped into the ocean off the heel of Cape Cod. 

 The sea has broken up the moraine into eight little islands by 

 wearing tide channels between hill and hill. The names of these 

 islands are recorded in the jingle which the children of that re- 

 gion learn before they go to school : 



*' Naushon, Nonamesset, Uncatena, and "Wepecket, 

 Nashawena, Pesquiaese, Cuttyhunk, and Penikese." 



And Penikese, last and smallest of them, lies, a little forgotten 

 speck, out in the ocean, eighteen miles south of New Bedford. It 

 contains two hills, joined together by a narrow isthmus, a little 

 harbor, a farm-house, a flag-staff, a barn, a willow tree, and a 

 flock of sheep. And here Agassiz founded his school. This was 

 in the month of June in the year 1873. 



From the many hundred applicants who sent in their names 

 as soon as the school was made public Agassiz chose fifty — thirty 

 men, twenty women — teachers, students, and naturalists of various 

 grades from all parts of the country. This practical recogni- 

 tion of coeducation was criticised by many of Agassiz's friends, 

 trained in the monastic schools of New England, but the results 

 soon justified the decision. These fifty teachers should be trained 

 so far as he could train them in right methods of work. They 

 should carry into their schools his own views of scientific teach- 

 ing. Then each of these schools would become in its time a cen- 

 ter of help to others, until the influence toward real work in sci- 

 ence should spread throughout our educational system. 



None of us will ever forget his first sight of Agassiz. We had 

 come down from New Bedford in a little tug-boat in the early 

 morning, and Agassiz met us at the landing-place on the island. 

 He was standing almost alone on the little wharf, and his great 

 face beamed with pleasure. For this summer school, the thought 

 of his old age, might be the crowning work of his lifetime. Who 

 could foresee what might come from the efforts of fifty men and 

 women, teachers of science, each striving to do his work in the 



