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In one of his, letters home. Agassiz said: "If I could for a 

 moment forget that I have a scientific mission to fulfill I could 

 easily make more than enough by my lectures to put me com- 

 pletely at my ease, but I will limit myself to what I need to 

 repay those who helped me through a difficult crisis. Beyond 

 that all must go to science there lies my true mission." 



So said Prof. Worthen in deed, if not in words. I well re- 

 member his only anxiety for money was to pay some balances 

 on his mercantile debts, and these he paid out of his salary 

 earned in his early employment in geological surveys, and as 

 with his great exemplar, all beyond that "went to science." As 

 said by me in the obituary notice of him published in the War- 

 saw (111.) Bulletin just after his decease, Prof. Worthen was, 

 Like most men who become eminent in any special work, en- 

 tirely devoted to that work, and counted all else as dross in 

 comparison with results to be obtained in his favorite field of 

 investigation, and the result with him, as with such men in all 

 ages, has been a long, honorable, industrious and useful life, 

 and an honored and lamented death. 



3 



