236 ALEXANDER AGASSIZ 



have accomplished that great work, Cambridge will be 

 a unique place in the world for such a natural system- 

 atic display of the animal creation. When steamships 

 can cross the Atlantic in four days, I expect that Euro- 

 pean Naturalists will go and study your father's plans 

 and views as exhibited in this Museum, whose existence 

 will be due to your exertions and liberality." 



It had always been Agassiz's aim to build up a mu- 

 seum that would above all things furnish facilities for 

 original investigation and advanced work, and his efforts 

 were constantly directed toward that end. It was now 

 becoming apparent that the resources of the Museum 

 were being more and more absorbed in undergraduate 

 instruction, for which they were never intended. This 

 often led him to take a dark view of his work for the 

 Museum, and to wish that the time he had spent in its 

 interests had been used in other directions. Such feel- 

 ings grew with the advancing years, and his correspond- 

 ence abounds in passages similar to the following extract 

 from a letter of somewhat later date to Professor F. Jef- 

 frey Bell, of the British Museum : — 



" Since Fewkes left the Museum we have had no 

 specialist for Radiates, and hence all I can send you is 

 a small piece of Titanideum suberosum from Stono In- 

 let, South Carolina. I picked this off from one of the 

 specimens on exhibition. I don't quite see what is to 

 become of us. I am sick to death of supplying the 

 means of running a big machine, when I have so much 

 better use for them in explorations and publications. 

 After twenty years of playing a lone hand, I shall some 

 fine day clear out and burn my ships behind me. I have 

 no doubt there is no end of this material in the Museum 



