106 FOUNDERS OF OCEANOGRAPHY 



by no other name than the " Museum of Comparative 

 Zoology," but this decision, although officially adhered to, 

 has been defeated by popular acclaim, as the museum is 

 known in Harvard, and probably amongst most scientific 

 men all over the world, as the " Agassiz " museum. 



In 1865 Louis Agassiz organized an important expedition 

 to Brazil, largely in the interests of the museum, and in 1870, 

 along with his friend Count de Pourtales, who had followed 

 him from Europe, he undertook his last cruise in the Coast 

 Survey steamer " Bibb," on which he conducted important 

 deep-sea surveying and dredging in the region of the West 

 Indies, and amongst other oceanographic results pronounced 

 in favour of the permanence of the great ocean basins. In 

 the following year, 1871-2, he conducted an extensive 

 dredging cruise on the " Hassler " round the whole of the 

 South American coast from Florida to San Francisco. 

 Incidentally, it may be remarked that some of their deepest 

 and possibly most interesting hauls were lost, it is said, through 

 the rottenness of the towing-ropes due to damp. Alexander 

 Agassiz, in the many expeditions in which he continued and 

 extended the work of his father, avoided this difficulty by 

 introducing the use of wire rope for dredging purposes. 



We now come to the last episode in the Hfe of the old 

 professor. In 1873 a New York merchant, Mr. John 

 Anderson, reading accidentally a report in an evening paper 

 of an address by Agassiz setting forth the advantages that 

 would result in the training of young biologists from the 

 establishment of a marine laboratory, wrote offering for the 

 purpose the island of Penikese, at the mouth of Buzzard's 

 Bay, o& the New England coast, with its existing buildings, 

 and a sum of $50,000 for the purpose of converting these and 

 equipping them for the required purpose. This offer was 

 made in the early summer, and by July 8, as the result of 

 strenuous endeavour and a combined effort on the part of the 

 professor, his students and the workmen, the buildings were 

 converted, furnished and equipped, and were opened for the 



