1 ARRIVING IN WOODS HOLE 



/A 



Louis Agassiz at the blackboard. 

 MBL Archives. 



spoke to a crowded audience of 1,200 people. When he occasionally had to 

 pause and grasp for the proper English word, he also grasped the chalk and 

 began to draw. Sometimes using both hands, Agassiz drew organisms tliat 

 came alive on the board behind him, entertaining the audience further. 



Naturalists in the nineteenth century had to draw, because they often 

 spent a high percentage of their time meticulously depicting what they had 

 seen in order to communicate it to others who had not. Naturalists who 

 could not draw had serious trouble. Or those who found painstaking 

 watercolor work carelessly washed away by drops of seawater falling from 

 wet hair after a swim could lose a precious investment. They could not 

 simply photograph what tliey saw, not until the very end of the century, and 

 then only with poorer clarity than the eye could see. They did not have the 

 remarkable advanced technology, such as video microscopy, being devel- 

 oped today. The photographer that the MBL first added to tlie staff in 1897 

 did not replace practical everyday drawing for quite some time. 



