LOUIS JOHN RUDOLPH AGASSIZ. 1()!» 



letters in Boston and the vicinity. This course of 

 lectures led to important results. It aroused an 

 enthusiasm for the study of nature in the widesi 

 circles ; and Agassiz understood how to make the 

 scientific development of North America in this 

 direction a matter of honour for the whole nation. 



Immediately afterwards, by special request, he 

 delivered another course of lectures upon the glaciers 

 and the phenomena connected with their former 

 greater extension. 



Hitherto Agassiz had been the brilliant dis- 

 coverer, now he was to be the explorer and the 

 teacher. In 1847, Mr. Abbott Lawrence, witli the 

 same judicious selection that M. Coulon had shown 

 fifteen years before, offered to found for Agassiz a 

 professorship of zoology and geology in the Scien- 

 tific School at Harvard College, Cambridge, Mass. 

 Having obtained an honourable discharge from his 

 European engagements, he accepted the appointment, 

 and gave up all thought of returning to Europe. 

 He placed his activity, his science, and his talents, 

 at the disposal of the nation that showed itself so 

 anxious to keep him, and where he would enjoy a 

 social power and a liberty, which were hardly possible 

 to the savans of the Old World. 



As in Neuchatel, so in Cambridge, Agassiz in a very 

 short time attracted around him a circle of young 

 men, enterprising lovers of natural science. He 

 entered upon his duties at Cambridge in the spring 

 of 1849, and at the close of the academic year 

 started with twelve of his pupils upon a scientific 



