AGASSIZ'S LABORATORY 97 



naturalist. The beginning was indeed quite different, and, as 

 will be seen, in a manner that quickly evaporated my conceit. 

 It was made and continued in a way I will now recount. 



Agassiz's laboratory was then in a rather small two-storied 

 building, looking much like a square dwelling-house, which 

 stood where the College Gymnasium now stands. The struct- 

 ure is still extant, though in forty-six years it has three times 

 changed its site and uses, having been first a club-house for his 

 students on Divinity Avenue, where the Peabody Museum 

 has been built ; it went thence to a site on Jarvis Street, where 

 it served as the club-house and theatre for the Hasty Pudding 

 Club; from there a little further west to its present location, 

 where, after being long the habitation for the department of 

 French, it came to be a part of the little establishment for teach- 

 ing students astronomy. Agassiz had recently moved into it 

 from a shed on the marsh near Brighton bridge, the original 

 tenants, the engineers, having come to riches in the shape of the 

 brick structure now known as the Lawrence Building. In this 

 primitive establishment Agassiz's laboratory, as distinguished 

 from the storerooms where the collections were crammed, oc- 

 cupied one room about thirty feet long and fifteen feet wide 

 - what is now the west room on the lower floor of the edifice. 

 In this place, already packed, I had assigned to me a small 

 pine table with a rusty tin pan upon it. Of other students, 

 all somewhat older than myself, there were : Alpheus Hyatt, 

 F. W. Putnam, A. E. Verrill, E. S. Morse, Richard Wheatland, 

 Caleb Cook, and a person by the name of Lamb. Hereto also 

 came from time to time but not regularly Theodore Lyman 

 and Stimpson. There was also in some narrow quarters 

 a translator, a Swede, whose name is gone from me, and a 

 sterling old person, Gugenheimer, who served as a preparator. 

 Agassiz's artists generally worked at his near-by dwelling or at 

 his place at Nahant. One of the small rooms upstairs was a 

 sleeping-place for Putnam, who served as keeper of the estab- 

 lishment. I have given what may seem unnecessary details 



