266 LOUIS AGASSIZ. 



ity, with its fascinating speculations, should 

 draw Agassiz away from his ichthyological re- 

 searches. 



HUMBOLDT TO AGASSIZ. 



BERLIN, December 2, 1837. 



I have this moment received, my dear 

 friend, by the hand of M. de Werther, the 

 cabinet minister, your eighth and ninth num- 

 bers, with a fine pamphlet of text. I hasten 

 to express my warm thanks, and I congratu- 

 late the public on your somewhat tardy res- 

 olution to give a larger proportion of text. 

 One should flatter neither the king, nor the 

 people, nor one's dearest friend. I maintain, 

 therefore, that no one has told you forcibly 

 enough how the very persons who justly ad- 

 mire your work, constantly complain of this 

 fragmentary style of publication, which is the 

 despair of those who have not the leisure to 

 place your scattered sheets where they belong 

 and disentangle the skein. 1 



I think you would do well to publish for 

 a while more text than plates. You could do 



1 Owing to the irregularity with which he received and 

 was forced to work up his material, Agassiz was often either 

 in advance or in arrears with certain parts of his subject, so 

 that his plates and his text did not keep pace with each other, 

 thus causing his readers much annoyance. 



