THE NEW MUSEUM 101 



brought from a place of execution. The sight of this was much 

 sought after, especially by women in search of a sensation. In 

 the course of a year a collection was installed which in certain 

 ways was then the best in this country. 



My share in the work of bringing a preliminary order into 

 the new museum was considerable, and while for some months 

 it broke all systematic study it was largely profitable. It gave 

 me a chance to gain hard contact with a great range of animal 

 forms, both recent and fossil, and to it I owe a general know- 

 ledge of organic forms which I could not have otherwise ac- 

 quired. There was at that time no other means of finding one's 

 way to such information. Agassiz's lectures gave us little. 

 Though very interesting from their personal quality, the field 

 they covered was curiously limited. In the first term he gave 

 about twenty-five lectures on zoology and in the second about 

 the same number in geology. The first series began with a very 

 interesting sketch of the general principles of the science, which 

 quickly passed to problems of classification and thence to ques- 

 tions of comparative anatomy, practically limited to the polyps, 

 acalephs, and echinoderms. In the years from 1859 to his death 

 in 1873, whenever he gave these lectures, perhaps six or eight 

 years, their form and contents remained unchanged. The geo- 

 logical series was practically altogether devoted to the sim- 

 pler problems of stratigraphy or the succession of geological 

 periods; about one third of the course was given to the glacial 

 period. Except for the noble and marvellously contagious 

 enthusiasm with which he approached the subject and the 

 admirable pictures of the masters he had known, the lectures 

 were not profitable to his students; in those regards the 

 weightiest possible they were most valuable. 



By far the greater part of the instruction I had from my 

 master was in divers bits of talk concerning certain species 

 and the arrangement of the specimens. He would often work 

 with me for hours unrolling fossils, all the! while keeping up a 

 running commentary which would range this way and that, of 



