ALEXANDER AGASSIZ MAYER. 449 



an assistant on the United States survey, and departed to take part 

 in the task of charting the region of the mouth of the Columbia 

 River, Oreg., and in establishing the northwest boundary. During 

 this visit to the Pacific coast he found time in intervals of travel be- 

 tween official duties to study the fishes and medusae of San Francisco 

 Harbor and Puget Sound, and to collect specimens at Acapulco and 

 Panama for his father's museum; but after a year's absence he 

 acceded to his father's earnest request and came home to Cambridge 

 to continue his zoological studies and to assist in the upbuilding of 

 the great museum which was the dream of his father's life. 



We now come to the period of the beginning of his scientific pro- 

 ductivity, for in 1859 he published his first paper — a brief address 

 before the Boston Society of Natural History upon the mechanism of 

 the flight of Lepidoptera. It seems strange that this first paper of 

 one who was destined to devote his life to the study of marine animals 

 and to the sea should have been upon butterflies and moths. More- 

 over, it is his only paper save one upon a mechanical principle under- 

 lying animal activity, his later work in zoology being of a systematic, 

 descriptive, or embryological character. 



These years when he worked by his father's side and assisted him 

 from the time the museum was formally opened in 18G0 until 18G6 

 when he went to Michigan to develop the Calumet and Hecla copper 

 mine were probably the happiest of his life. At first he had charge of 

 the alcoholic specimens, of the exchanges and the business manage- 

 ment of the museum — sufficient to swamp an ordinary man; but he 

 was a hercules of energy and executive power, and his remarkable 

 ability as an organizer probably saved the museum from many an 

 embarrassment which his father's buoyant enthusiasm and simple 

 faith in destiny might have brought upon it. He had much of that 

 ardent love of the study of nature which was his father's own, but it 

 was tempered and controlled by a more conservative judgment and 

 a keener insight into the motives of men, so that the two working in 

 sympathy together made an ideal team for drawing the museum 

 upward from obscurity to prominence; for these early days were 

 critical ones in its history. In 1866, when his father was absent in 

 Brazil, Alexander Agassiz had entire charge of the museum. 



On November 15, 1860, he married Miss Anna Eussell, daughter of 

 George E. Russell, a leading merchant of Boston. The wedding took 

 place at the home of the bride's brother-in-law, Dr. Theodore Lyman. 



Arduous as his official duties were from 1859 to 1866, when he 

 studied in the museum at Cambridge, they did not prevent his accom- 

 plishing a remarkable amount of work in science, for he devoted his 

 summers to study upon the seashore at a time when the waters of 

 many a now polluted harbor were pure, so that he discovered many 

 new and remarkable marine animals in the neighborhood of Boston, 

 97578°— sm 1910 29 



