96 



THE SPRING OF THE YEAR 



ing unusual or interesting about the getting of tur- ( '/ 

 tie eggs when you want them. Nothing at all, if you / s 

 should chance to want the eggs as you chance to y \ 

 find them. So with anything else. But if you want , 

 turtle eggs when you want them, and are bound to 

 have them, then you must get Mr. Jenks, or some- i 

 body else to get them for you. 



Agassiz wanted those turtle eggs when he wanted 

 them not a minute over three hours from the min- f 

 ute they were laid. Yet even that does not seem ex- 

 acting, hardly more difficult than the getting of hens' 

 jj eggs only three hours old. Just so, provided the pro- 

 i fessor could have had his private turtle-coop in 

 Harvard College Yard ; and provided he could have 

 made his turtles lay. But turtles will not respond, 

 like hens, to meat-scraps and the warm mash. The 

 ! professor's problem was not to get from a mud 

 | turtle's nest in the back yard to his work-table in 

 ; the laboratory; but to get from the laboratory in 

 , Cambridge to some pond when the turtles were lay- 

 ing, and back to the laboratory within the limited 

 time. And this might have called for nice and dis- 

 criminating work as it did. 



Agassiz had been engaged for a long time upon 

 his " Contributions." He had brought the great work 

 /nearly to a finish. It was, indeed, finished but for 

 one small yet very important bit of observation: he 

 ? had carried the turtle egg through every stage of 

 jits development with the single exception of one 



