268 LOUIS AGASSIZ, 



of others; perfectly true, but such is the 

 pleasing position of affairs here below. Have 

 I not been driven for thirty-three years to busy 

 myself with that tiresome America, and am I 

 not, even yet, daily insulted because, after 

 publishing thirty - two volumes of the great 

 edition in folio and in quarto, and twelve hun- 

 dred plates, one volume of the historical sec- 

 tion is wanting ? We men of letters are the 

 servants of an arbitrary master, whom we have 

 imprudently chosen, who flatters and pets us 

 first, and then tyrannizes over us if we do 

 not work to his liking. You see, my dear 

 friend, I play the grumbling old man, and, at 

 the risk of deeply displeasing you, place my- 

 self on the side of the despotic public. . . . 



With reference to the general or periodical 

 lowering of the temperature of the globe, I 

 have never thought it necessary, on account 

 of the elephant of the Lena, to admit that 

 sudden frost of which Cuvier used to speak. 

 What I have seen in Siberia, and what has 

 been observed in Captain Beechey's expedition 

 on the northwest coast of America, simply 

 proves that there exists a layer of frozen drift, 

 in the fissures of which (even now) the muscu- 

 lar flesh of any animal which should acciden- 

 tally fall into them would be preserved intact. 



