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NATURE 



\April 24, 1879 



tales, in this well-known expedition, had charge of the 

 deep-sea researches, while Dr. Steindachner with Agassiz, 

 was responsible for the other zoological collections. The 

 results of this expedition are well known to naturalists. 

 The leisurely cruise along the coast of Patagonia and 

 Chili gave Agassiz an opportunity of studying the glacial 

 phenomena of South America. His stay in San Francisco 

 and Sacramento gave an impulse of the greatest import- 

 ance to education and science in these towns, and in the 

 latter led to the creation of a . Natural History Society, 

 which was named after him, the Agassiz Institute. 



The history of the Penikese School of Natural History 

 must be so fresh in the memory of our readers that we 

 need not here repeat the details. The success of the 

 school, modelled somewhat after that of Dohrn, at 

 Naples, exceeded all expectation, the accommodation 

 being quite inadequate for the number of students who 

 appeared. At the end of the first summer his pupils bade 

 him a long good-bye in the hope of meeting their much- 

 loved master next year. But the additional burden 

 seems to have been too great for the strength of the 

 never-resting devotee of science. After scarcely eight 

 days' illness, he died at Cambridge, December 14, 1873, 

 in his sixty-third year, in the height of his fame. He has 

 been justly named by his fellow-citizens of the States the 

 " Humboldt of America." Ever amiable and open in 

 intercourse, stimulating and instructive, clear and concise 

 in exposition, was Agassiz ; and his numerous pupils, of 

 whom several have developed into important workers in 

 science, as Alex. Agassiz, Stimpson, Putnam, Shaler, 

 Wilder, Morse, &c., 'clung to him with truly child-like 

 love and respect. The news of his unexpectedly sudden 

 death shocked the whole population deeply, for America 

 had lost in him one of her citizens of whom she had the 

 best right to be proud. 



Besides Dr. Steindachner' s paper, we would refer the 

 reader who desires further details to a paper in the Revue 

 des Deux Mondes for July and August, 1875. 



WATERTON'S LIFE AND TRAVELS 



Wanderings in South America, the North-West of the 

 United States, and the Antilles, in the Years 1812, 1816, 

 1820, arid 1824. With Original Instructions for the 

 Perfect Preservation of Birds, &c., for Cabinets of 

 Natural History. By Charles Waterton. New Edition. 

 Edited, with Biographical Introduction and Explana- 

 tory Index, by the Rev. J. G. Wood. With 100 Illus- 

 trations. (London : Macmillan and Co., 1879.) 

 THE reading world will feel grateful to both author 

 and publisher for this handsome edition of one of 

 our classical books of travel and natural history ; while 

 those who are already familiar with the work will read 

 with interest and pleasure the excellent biographical 

 notice of Waterton here given. We have first a sketch 

 of his school and college life, when his taste for natural 

 history got him into many scrapes ; but we learn that the 

 Jesuit fathers at Stonyhurst wisely utilised his irrepressible 

 love of animals by making him rat-catcher and general 

 vermin-killer to the estabhshment. We next find him 

 travelling on the Continent, where he had a narrow escape 

 of dying of the plague at Malaga. He visited Gibraltar, 

 and saw a whole colony of the well-known apes which 

 were then far more abundant than now. He speculates 

 on the "tremendous convulsion of nature" which had 



opened the channel of the Straits, observing that — " if 

 apes had been on Gibraltar when the sudden shock oc- 

 curred, these unlucky mimickers of man would have seen 

 their late intercourse with Africa quite at an end" — a 

 passage which recalls to us those extreme catastrophist 

 doctrines in geology which are now happily extinct. 



When his wanderings in South America were at an end 

 he settled down in his ancestral Yorkshire home, Walton 

 Hall, devoting himself to the management of his estate 

 and the study of nature, and living a life of the most 

 Spartan simplicity. His single room had neither bed nor 

 carpet. He always lay on the bare boards with a blanket 

 wrapped round him, and with an oaken block by way of 

 pillow. He went to bed at eight, and was up, dressed 

 and clean shaven every morning at four, having himself 

 lit a fire and boiled water to shave with. His devotions 

 and reading occupied him till six ; his bailiff's report, 

 writing and business till eight, his breakfast hour ; so that 

 he had done a fair day's work before most people are out 

 of bed. His room was at the very top of the house ; he 

 never touched fermented liquors, and took very little meat. 



His great delight was in studying the habits of birds 

 and other wild animals ; and he devoted his park of over 

 250 acres to this purpose. He had moats, and ponds, 

 and swamps, woods and trees of all kinds ; and he spent 

 10,000/. in suiTOunding the whole with a wall nowhere 

 less than eight feet high, in order to keep out poachers 

 and animal intmders. In this domain no gun was ever 

 fired or anything done to disturb the feathered inhabi- 

 tants. The very year after the wall was finished the 

 herons came and established themselves in the park, 

 where they had never bred before ; and, as Mr. Wood re- 

 marks, it is strange that they should have known that the 

 wall, which they themselves could so easily pass, would 

 be any protection to them. He constructed a yew fort- 

 ress for pheasants, built a cat-proof tower for starlings, 

 and a lofty dovecot to secure his pigeons from poachers. 

 Owls and titmice and many other birds had special haunts 

 constructed for them, while rats and other bird-enemies 

 were carefully trapped or poisoned. 



Waterton was one of the kindest and most humane of 

 men. He studied the comforts of his horses, his dogs, 

 and even of his pigs, as if they had been human beings. 

 He had his gates specially constructed so that his horses 

 and cows could lean over them and converse together, 

 without inconvenience to themselves or injury to the gates. 

 When he took possession of a deserted country house in 

 Demerara, tenanted by frogs and snakes, owls and vam- 

 pires, he tells us in his quaint language,—" The frogs, 

 and here and there a snake, received that attention which 

 the weak in this world generally experience from the 

 strong, and which the law commonly denominates an 

 ejectment. But here neither the frogs nor serpents were 

 ill-treated ; they sallied forth, without buffet or rebuke, to 

 choose their place of residence ; the world was all before 

 them. The owls went away of their own accord, pre- 

 ferring to retire to a hollow tree rather than to associate 

 with their new landlord. The bats and vampires stayed 

 with me, and went in and out as usual." Even when, 

 going down the St. Lawrence, he caught, crawhng on his 

 neck, the only bug he saw in North America, he " thought 

 of my uncle Toby and the fly ; " and so, instead of killing 

 it, he "quietly chucked it among some baggage that was 



