SPECIAL CLASSES. 21 



found its way into his village. How he is encouraged 

 by this graceful sympathy! He hoards his earnings till 

 the book is bought. He studies it by candlelight after 

 the chores are done. He masters it and presents it to his 

 little society, where it becomes the nucleus of a scientific 

 library, which ten years from now may require a build- 

 ing to protect it. By the time this boy has finished 

 school he knows more about the fish in the local waters 

 than his parents or instructors, and he has become fired 

 with ambition to go to some place where he can meet 

 men who know enough to teach him more. He enters a 

 college or higher scientific school, and becomes, before 

 many years are gone, himself a specialist, ready, nay 

 eager, to help other poor boys in other isolated places. 

 This is no fancy sketch, but has been realized over and 

 over again since the Agassiz Association was founded in 



1875. 



SPECIAL CLASSES. 



Among the pleasant features of the A. A. have been 

 our special courses of study. These have been conducted 

 by men high in their departments, and at a nominal cost. 

 Dr. Marcus E. Jones, of Salt Lake City, has taken 

 a class through elementary botany; Prof. G. Howard 

 Parker has directed a six-months' course in entomology; 

 Prof. E. L. French, of Wells College, has managed a very 

 successful course of botanical collecting and exchange; 

 Prof. W. O. Crosby, of the Boston Society of Natural 

 History, has conducted two classes, each of one hundred 

 and fifty pupils, through higvhly interesting courses in 

 the elements of determinative mineralogy; Prof. Gustav 

 Guttenberg, of Pittsburgh, has taken nearly a thousand 

 young correspondents through a succession of four 

 courses in mineralogy, and the results have far exceeded 

 our highest expectations; and Mr. Alex. Wight, of Fram- 



