476 



PIONEERS OF SCIENCE IN AMERICA. 



to the training of eye and hand gained in these childish 

 plays." 



When Louis was ten years old he was sent to a school for 

 boys at Bienne. Up to this time his parents had been his only 

 teachers ; and he could not have had better. Wherever his 

 father was settled as pastor his influence was felt hardly less in 

 the schools than in the pulpit. At Bienne nine hours of school 

 work a day were required an amount that would not be borne 

 in American schools, and that doubtless goes far to explain the 

 superior attainments that Americans recognise in men educated 

 in Europe. Yet whether or not from some difference in method, 

 or climate, or mode of life, or temperament, the boys were 

 healthy and happy under these exactions. After four years at 

 this school the time came when it was intended that Louis 

 should enter the business house of an uncle at Neuchatel, as 

 his parents did not feel able to give him further educational 

 advantages. But the boy had formed the desire to become a 

 man of letters and begged for at least two years in the academy 

 at Lausanne. His request, which was supported by his former 

 teachers, was granted. At Lausanne his taste for everything 

 bearing upon the study of Nature became more pronounced. 

 His mother's brother, Dr. Mathias Mayor, who was a promi- 

 nent physician in Lausanne, soon perceived the bent of the 

 youth's mind, and advised that his nephew be allowed to study 

 medicine as the calling probably most congenial to him. His 

 parents were persuaded to this view, and Louis at seventeen 

 years of age entered the medical school of Zurich. His brother 

 Auguste, who had entered the school at Bienne a year later 

 than Louis, was still his constant companion. Many an hour 

 did the young students spend in copying books which their 

 scanty means would not permit them to buy. This was largely 

 a labour of love on the part of the younger brother, for the 

 books were more needed in Louis's studies than in his. 



After two years at Zurich Louis went, early in 1826, to the 

 University of Heidelberg, while Auguste entered upon com- 

 mercial life in Neuchatel. At the university the letters that 

 Louis brought from former instructors, together with his dili- 

 gence and winning disposition, quickly gained the interest of 

 his professors. At the suggestion of one of them he made the 

 acquaintance of a fellow-student, Alexander Braun, who was 

 as enthusiastic a botanist as Agassiz was a zoologist. They 



