COUNTRY HOLIDAYS. 497 



the centre of a stimulating and cultivated so- 

 cial intercourse, free from all gdne or formal- 

 ity. Here Agassiz and his family spent many 

 happy days during their southern sojourn of 

 1852. The woods were yellow with jessa- 

 mine, and the low, deep piazza was shut in by 

 vines and roses ; the open windows and the 

 soft air full of sweet, out-of-door fragrance 

 made one forget, spite of the wood fire on the 

 hearth, that it was winter by the calendar. 

 The days, passed almost wholly in the woods 

 or on the veranda, closed with evenings spent 

 not infrequently in discussions upon the sci- 

 entific ideas and theories of the day, carried 

 often beyond the region of demonstrated facts 

 into that of speculative thought. An ever- 

 recurring topic was that of the origin of the 

 human race. It was Agassiz's declared belief 

 that man had sprung not from a common 

 stock, but from various centres, and that the 

 original circumscription of these primordial 

 groups of the human family corresponded in 

 a large and general way with the distribution 

 of animals and their combination into faunae. 1 

 His special zoological studies were too en- 



1 See Sketch of the Natural Provinces of the Animal World 

 and their Relation to the Different Types of Man included in 

 Nott & Gliddon's Types of Mankind. 

 32 



