104 FOUNDERS OF OCEANOGRAPHY 



displays the wonderful collections made by both Louis and 

 Alexander Agassiz as the result of their many expeditions. 



In the meantime his wife in Switzerland had died, and 

 shortly afterwards he brought his son Alexander, then a 

 youth of thirteen, to join him at Boston. His grandson, 

 writing of this time, says : " Professor Agassiz's little house 

 in Oxford Street must surely have seemed a strange home to 

 the small foreigner. The household, besides the father, 

 consisted of a dear old artist, Mr. Burkhardt, a young 

 Harvard student, Mr. Edward King, an old Swiss minister 

 called ' Papa Christinat,' who was supposed to look after the 

 housekeeping, a bear, some eagles, a crocodile, a few snakes, 

 and sundry other live stock. These last enlivened the home 

 life in various ways. Sometimes there was a wild chase to 

 capture the eagles, or a hunt to discover in what corner of the 

 house the snakes had hidden themselves. Once, when there 

 was a large party at dinner, an uncertain and heavy tread 

 was heard upon the cellar stairs, and Bruin, having broken 

 his chain, and broached a cask of wine, lurched into the 

 room." A year afterwards, however, Agassiz married 

 Elizabeth Gary, of Boston, who seems to have reduced chaos 

 to order and taken charge of the erratic professor and his 

 children and eventually the grandchildren, in the most 

 admirable and loving manner, which Alexander Agassiz 

 repaid by taking affectionate care of her for many years 

 after his father's death. 



Louis Agassiz now became an oceanographer. His 

 important investigation of the Florida Reefs and Keys 

 on behaK of the Coast Survey took place in 1851. The 

 peninsula of Florida he made out to be formed by a succes- 

 sion of concentric reefs, separated by deep channels, the 

 older of which have become silted up to form the well- 

 known " Everglades " ; while the Tortugas show a real atoll, 

 but formed without the remotest indication of subsidence. 

 He remarks further in his report that " one of the most 

 remarkable peculiarities of the rocks in the reefs of the 



