JEAN LOUIS RODOLPHE AGASSIZ. 477 



became fast friends for life. Karl Schimper was another 

 friend whom he found at Heidelberg. As the distance made 

 it too expensive for Agassiz to spend his vacations with 

 his parents, he soon became accustomed to pass them at the 

 home of Braun at Carlsruhe. Braun's father was much devoted 

 to science, having a rich collection of minerals, and his house 

 afforded abundant facilities for the studies of his sons and 

 their young friends. Here young Braun brought Agassiz in 

 the spring of 1827 to recover from an attack of typhus fever. 

 And when the patient was advised to recruit in his native air, 

 Braun accompanied him all the way to his own home. Braun 

 having become convinced that there were especially good facili- 

 ties for scientific study at Munich proposed that Agassiz accom- 

 pany him there in the fall of the same year. To this the latter 

 readily assented, and Schimper soon followed them. Here, 

 under Martius, Oken, Dollinger, and Schelling, he devoted 

 himself eagerly to the pursuit of natural history, though still 

 as at Heidelberg keeping up his medical studies out of defer- 

 ence to the wishes of his parents. At that time Martius was 

 publishing his great work on the Natural History of Brazil, 

 and Spix, who was editing the zoological portion, having re- 

 cently died, Martius intrusted to Agassiz the description of the 

 fishes. In this work, which was admirably well done, Agassiz 

 characterized nine genera, embracing forty-two species new to 

 science. 



For some time Agassiz had contemplated a monograph on 

 the Fresh-water Fishes of Central Europe, but pecuniary em- 

 barrassment rendered this impossible, till a bookseller by the 

 name of Cotta, to whom Agassiz showed the material he had 

 collected, furnished him the means necessary for its completion. 

 Meanwhile he studied and obtained the degree of Doctor of 

 Philosophy, and soon after obtained that of Doctor of Medicine. 

 After his examination, Agassiz went to Vienna, and applied 

 himself closely to the study of actual and fossil ichthyology. He 

 then spent a year at home continuing his studies and practising 

 medicine, after which, in the fall of 1831, he went to Paris, where 

 he made the acquaintance of Cu vier and Humboldt, both of whom 

 warmly welcomed this expert young naturalist. Here he lived 

 on the most intimate terms with Cuvier for some months, till 

 the death of that naturalist, when he returned to Switzerland 

 and established himself at Neuchatel, where he was appointed 



