1 I ARRIVING IN WOODS HOLE A 9 



In 1873 Boston, like much of America, was in the throes of popular 

 enthusiasm for science when Agassiz arrived. The publicity in the second 

 half of the nineteenth century for the notorious race for dinosaur bones by 

 Yale's Othniel Marsh and Pennsylvania's Edward Drinker Cope had inten- 

 sified public awareness of evolution theory and zoology generally. Nature 

 study had gained great populai ity here and abroad. Furthermore, the public 

 wanted education in science, for themselves and for their children. Boston 

 school committees mandated that there should be more science teaching in 

 the schools, because there was little done officially, especially in biological 

 subjects. 



But who was to teach science? Who was to teach biology? Because 

 biology at the time meant primarily natural history, and because natural 

 history of organisms cannot be learned simply by peering at textbooks, any 

 attempt to introduce biology into the schools meant having to teach the 

 teachers. "Study nature, not books, " Agassiz preached, explaining that he 

 would not allow textbooks into his classroom. But how were these school 

 teachers supposed to study nature? 



In 1873 a student of Agassiz, Nathaniel Shaler, suggested that Agassiz 

 offer a summer course for teachers. Yet the great popularizer had too many 

 projects demanding his time and was no longer a young man. He was not 

 sure. Besides it would take money to set up a school. He had enough trouble 

 getting sufficient fimds to keep his own Museum of Comparative Zoology 

 (MCZ) at Harvard going in proper style. And where would such a school be? 

 Giving a public lecture to generate support, he began to wonder out loud 

 about tlie possibilities. As he appealed to the Massachusetts legislature for 

 funds for the MCZ and for the summer school, it began to look as though 

 a school might be possible, on Nantucket Island. 



The Anderson School at Pen^xse 



Then some of the ever-popular Louis AgassLz's concerns found their way into 

 the New York newspapers, including tlie Times and Tribune. In response, a 

 wealthy New York businessman, John Anderson, wrote to Agassiz offering 

 land on the islajid of Penikese, off the coast of Woods Hole, plus his own 

 house there for Agassiz's personal use: a gift valued at $100,000. He also gave 

 $50,000 to serve as tlie base of a permanent endowment to open a summer 

 school of natural history for teachers. 



As reported in Nature, Anderson wrote to Agassiz that the school "may 

 be destined in future ages not only to afford the required instruction to the 

 youth of our country, but may be tlie means of attracting to our shores 

 numerous candidates from the Old World, who may find here, in the school 

 to be established by you, those means of fitting themselves for the teaching 

 of Natural History by Nature itself. Which by a strange oversight, appears to 



