REMARKS OF TRIERS 

 ROBERT C. WINTHROP TO DANA 



An interview with Thiers 



" BROOKLINE, MASS., 19 Sept., 1877. 



" The recent death of Thiers, of which I have just been 

 reading some of the notices in foreign journals, has re- 

 minded me of something which will be interesting to you, 

 and which I ought, perhaps, to have communicated to 

 you sooner. 



" In the summer of 1875, being in Paris, I dined with 

 Thiers. I was with him at his house on two or three 

 other occasions. During one of our interviews he talked 

 about science and scientific theories. I had referred, I 

 believe, to the then recent death of Agassiz, and to his 

 resistance to the evolution doctrine, of which I thought 

 Thiers seemed an earnest opponent. I may have misap- 

 prehended him in this, as he talked only in his own 

 language, and with great rapidity and some indistinct- 

 ness. 



" But suddenly he turned and inquired, ' Do you know 

 Monsieur Dana, a professor at New Haven ? ' I was 

 glad to be able to tell him that I did, but that I had not 

 met him as often as I could have wished, owing to his 

 residence in a different State. 



" He then said that he had recently read some work of 

 yours, probably the Corals and Coral Islands, with the 

 greatest gratification, and that there was no American 

 scientist for whom he had a higher respect. I am by no 

 means sure that he limited his remark to American scien- 

 tific writers. He seemed greatly impressed with your 

 views, and repeatedly expressed his warm admiration for 

 them ; and I remember well that before I left him, on 

 one of these occasions, he said : ' If you meet Monsieur 

 Dana, present my compliments and respects to him.' 



Possibly you had sent him a copy of one of your 

 works and he may not have acknowledged it, for I believe 

 he rarely acknowledged anything. But if he picked it up 

 accidentally, or sought it out purposely, and read it, his 

 compliment is all the more notable. 



I observe, in the accounts I have been reading to- 

 day, that in a paper supplementary to his will, giving 



357 



