96 THE SPRING OF THE YEAR 



ing unusual or interesting about the getting of tur- 

 tle eggs when you want them. Nothing at all, if you 

 should chance to want the eggs as you chance to 

 find them. So with anything else. But if you want 

 turtle eggs when you want them, and are bound to 

 have them, then you must get Mr. Jenks, or some- 

 body else to get them for you. 



Agassiz wanted those turtle eggs when he wanted 

 them not a minute over three hours from the min- 

 ute they were laid. Yet even that does not seem ex- 

 acting, hardly more difficult than the getting of hens' 

 eggs only three hours old. Just so, provided the pro- 

 fessor could have had his private turtle-coop in 

 Harvard College Yard ; and provided he could have 

 made his turtles lay. But turtles will not respond, 

 like hens, to meat-scraps and the warm mash. The 

 professor's problem was not to get from a mud 

 turtle's nest in the back yard to his work-table in 

 the laboratory; but to get from the laboratory in 

 Cambridge to some pond when the turtles were lay- 

 ing, and back to the laboratory within the limited 

 time. And this might have called for nice and dis- 

 criminating work as it did. 



Agassiz had been engaged for a long time upon 

 his "Contributions." He had brought the great work 

 nearly to a finish. It was, indeed, finished but for 

 one small yet very important bit of observation : he 

 had carried the turtle egg through every stage of 

 its development with the single exception of one 



