xliv PEOCEEDINGS OF THE 



of philosophical inquiry to which little attention had been directed 

 up to that time. He entered more fully into the same subject in a 

 second work, published by him at Paris in 1847 — ' Eecherches 

 sur les G-laciers.' 



For some years M. Agassiz held the Professorship of Natural 

 History at Neufchatel, where many of his works were published, 

 and where he had the constant assistance of the active and zealous 

 local Society of Natural History. 



In the year 1846 M. Agassiz left Europe for the United States, 

 where he gave a successful course of lectures at the Lowell In- 

 stitute. In 1847 he was appointed to a similar Professorship in 

 the University of Cambridge, Massachusetts. He held this 

 appointment until 1850, devoting himself for some time thereafter 

 to the arrangement of his natural-history collections. In 1851 he 

 explored the State of New Tork, and in the next year he was 

 aj)pointed Professor of Comparative Anatomy in the Medical 

 College of Charlestown in South Carolina ; but he resigned the 

 latter post after two years and returned to Cambridge. Id 1854 

 he published, in conjunction with Messrs. Gould and Perty, the 

 work entitled ' Universal Zoology and Greneral Sketches of 

 Zoology, containing an account of the structure, development, 

 and classification of all. types of animals living and extinct.' 

 He also published in America his ' Tour of Lake Superior.' 

 In the winter of 1865, Agassiz, who had long been engaged with 

 untiring zeal in the cultivation of his favourite pursuits, Avas com- 

 pelled by bad health to rest from work and seek change of scene 

 and climate. " Europe," he says, " was proposed ; but he thought 

 that although a naturalist miglit derive much enjoyment from 

 contact with the active scientific life of tlie Old "World, there would 

 be little intellectual rest." He was attracted towards Brazil by a 

 lifelong desire. Erom the time when, after the death of Spix, 

 Agassiz had been employed by Martins to describe the fishes they 

 had brought with them from their celebrated Brazilian journey, 

 the wish to study the fauna of those regions had been to Agassiz 

 an ever-recurring thought, a scheme deferred for want of oppor- 

 tunity, but never quite forgotten. But Agassiz was unwilling to 

 visit Brazil on a mere vacation-tour. To him, as to all true scientific 

 workers, complete rest was distasteful. On the other hand he was 

 conscious that he could effect little working alone. " I could not 

 forget," he wrote, " that had I only the necessary means, I might 

 ^make collections on this journey which would place the Museum 



