148 LEADING AMERICAN MEN OF SCIENCE 



to his own, the result was not a tragedy, as some of the breaking 

 of fond theories appear to be. Agassiz had placed himself on 

 record as believing that corals and coral reefs grew very slowly. 

 Dr. Holder proved the contrary, and with the writer kept coral 

 heads in partial confinement on the reef, which doubled their 

 diameter in a year. Such a specimen is to be seen in the Ameri- 

 can Museum of Natural History and is figured in the writer's 

 Elements of Zoology. 



Agassiz impressed me as a strong, virile man of remarkable 

 mold. Had he not been a naturalist, he would have been a 

 leader of men in some other direction. As an organizer he was 

 preeminent; as a scientist profound. He was a theorist and idealist 

 yet his attitude was essentially scientific; he sought the truth and 

 worked along the lines of logical investigation, feeling his way from 

 fact to fact, not jumping at conclusions; and it is this quality of 

 mind that has given him the position in the scientific history of 

 the world as its greatest teacher in the department of zoological 

 science. 



It is rare that an alien has become so thoroughly identified with 

 the country of his adoption as Agassiz. He was born in Switzer- 

 land May 28, 1807, in the little village of Mottier, in the canton of 

 Vaud, and came from a long line of intellectual men and women; 

 and possibly the deep religious feeling which dominated his entire 

 life and to some extent influenced his career, can be traced to 

 heredity, as his father was the sixth clergyman in a direct line from 

 a divine who came down from a Burgundian Huguenot who fled 

 from France to escape the persecutions which characterized the 

 reign of Louis XIV. 



While Agassiz had a life struggle to attain the prominence he 

 succeeded to, it can be said that he was a born genius in the fields in 

 which he later became conspicuous. When a youth he developed 

 a remarkable taste for nature study. He was conscientious, 

 indefatigable, studious, earnest, and possessed of a masterly 

 power of overcoming obstacles that would have appeared insur- 

 mountable to the average youth. An illustration of this is to be 

 seen in his attempts to become a naturalist. His father was deter- 



