11 



As a future inhabitant of America, it was fortunate for him 

 to have been bora, and to have grown up, in one of the free 

 cantons of Switzerland. He was thus accustomed to treat 

 men as equals ; and thus his perfect familiarity and his free- 

 dom from all assumption were as natural to him as they 

 were graceful and winning. He looked down upon none, 

 but felt a sympathy with every thing best in every heart. 

 The reality of these great human qualities gave a natural 

 dignity which his hearty and ready laugh could never 

 diminish. Every one was drawn toward him by what was 

 best in himself. With the greatest gentleness he united a 

 strong will, and with a resolute earnestness, untiring patience. 

 His great object was truth, and, as he never had any doubt 

 that it was truth, he may have been impatient, but he never 

 felt really angry with those who opposed it. 



Mr. Agassiz had, for several years, the great advantage and 

 privilege of being an assistant, in the description and delinea- 

 tion of fishes from Brazil, to Von Martins, the genial and elo- 

 quent old man of Munich. In him he had the example of a 

 man, who, with great resources as a naturalist, had, for many 

 years, given himself, in a foreign country, to the study of a 

 single department of Botany, without, howevei', shutting his 

 eyes to any thing that was new and remarkable in any page 

 of Natural History. To one who was a good listener and 

 never forgot what he heard, what a preparation must this 

 have been for his own expedition, many years after, to the 

 sources of the Amazon, to which he was invited by the Em- 

 peror of Brazil, in which he was assisted by the princely aid 

 of his own friends, and from which he brought home a greater 

 number of new species of fresh water fishes than were ever 

 before discovered by one individual, thus carrying forward 



