436 LOUIS F. DE POURTALES. 



of the Aar, being one of the party of Alpine explorers who, in 1810, 

 made their home mider the fiimous boulder known as the Hotel des 

 Neuchfitelois. When his friend and teacher came to America in 1847, 

 he accompanied him, and remained for some time with the little band 

 of naturalists who, first at East Boston and subsequently at Cambridge, 

 shared his labors. In 1848 Pourtales entered the United States 

 Coast Survey, where his ability and indefatigable industry were at 

 once recognized, and he remained attached to that branch of our 

 public service for many years. 



In 1851 he was engaged as assistant on the triangulation of the 

 Florida Reef. While there he collected a number of Gephyreans and 

 Holothurians which he described in the Proceedings of the American 

 Association for the Advancement of Science, together with a number 

 of species observed by him while living at East Boston and assisting 

 Professor Agassiz in the preparation of his text-book on Zoology, 

 afterwards published by him in conjunction with Dr. Gould. For 

 this text-book Pourtales prepared the greater number of the draw- 

 ings. These descriptions and those of Dr. Gould and Dr. Stimpson 

 formed for a long time the only literature of the large number of 

 Annelids and Holothurians, now so well known through the investiga- 

 tions of the Fish Commission along the Atlantic coast of the United 

 States. 



Thus prepared, Pourtales became deeply interested in everything 

 relating to the study of the bed of the ocean. Thanks to the 

 enlightened support of the then Superintendent of the Coast Survey, 

 Professor Bache, and of his successors. Professor Peirce and Captain 

 Patterson, he was enabled to devote his talents and industry to the 

 comparatively new field of " Thalassography " and the biological 

 investigations related to it. So interesting and valuable were the 

 results obtained, not only as an aid to navigation, but in their wider 

 bearing on the history of the Gulf Stream and on the distribution of 

 animal life at great depths, that in 18G6 he was sent out by Professor 

 Peirce, then Superintendent of the Coast Survey, to continue these 

 investigations on a larger scale. The large collections of samj^les of 

 sea-bottom accumulated by the different hydrographic expeditions of 

 the United States Coast Survey were carefully examined by him ; and 

 the results, accompanied b}"^ a chart of the sea-bottom on the east 

 coast of the United States, were published in Petermann's " Mittheil- 

 ungen," in advance of their appearance in the Coast Survey Reports. 



From 1854 until his resignation as Assistant in the United States 

 Coast Survey, Mr, Pourtales had charge of the field and office work 



