LOUIS AGASSIZ. 



LOUIS JOHN RODOLPH AGASSIZ, one of the most distinguished 

 naturalists and scientific explorers of the present daj', was born in 

 the parish of Mottier, between the lake of Neufchatel and the lake 

 of Morat, in Switzerland, on the 2Sth of May, 1807. Of Huguenot race his 

 father was a village pastor, as for six generations in lineal descent his ancestors 

 had been before him. The pastor's wife, a woman of rare worth and intel- 

 ligence, was the daughter of a Swiss physician. 



At the age of eleven, Louis entered the gymnasium of Bienne, whence he 

 was removed, in 1822, as a reward for his attainments in his scientific studies, 

 to the Academy of Lausanne. Two years later he engaged in the study of 

 medicine at the school at Zurich, and subsequently pursued the scientific and 

 philosophical courses at the Universities of Heidelberg and Munich, receiv- 

 ing his degree as doctor of medicine at the latter. The bent of his mind was 

 already shown at these latter institutions, in his devotion to the study of 

 botany and comparative anatomy. 



His father designed him for a commercial life, and was impatient at his 

 devotion to frogs, snakes, and fishes. He came to London with letters to 

 Sir Roderick Murchison. The great English geologist took the lad, the 

 same evening, to a meeting of the Royal Society, and at the close said : " I 

 have a young friend here from Switzerland, who thinks he knows something 

 about fishes. There is, under this cloth," pointing to a heap on the table, 

 " the skeleton of a fish which existed long before man." He then gave the 

 precise locality where it was found, with one or two other facts concerning 

 it. " Can you sketch for me on the blackboard your idea of the fish ? " he 

 asked in conclusion. 



Agassiz took the chalk and rapidly sketched the skeleton. The portrait 

 was correct in every bone and line. " Sir," said Agassiz, when he told the 

 story, " that was the proudest moment of my life." 



In 1828, at the age of twenty-one, Agassiz began his public career as a 

 naturalist by the description of two new fishes in the " Isis " and " Linnaea," 

 two foreign periodicals occupied with natural history. The following year 

 he was selected to assist the eminent German naturalist, Von Martius, in his 



(781) 



