482 PIONEERS OF SCIENCE IN AMERICA. 



months before his departure Agassiz was busily engaged in 

 completing several scientific undertakings that he had in hand. 

 Then, leaving his son Alexander at school at Neuchatel and his 

 wife, with their daughters, in the care of her brother, at Carls- 

 ruhe, he sailed for the United States in September, 1846. 



Agassiz was thirty-nine years of age when he came to the 

 land that was to be his home for the rest of his life. His repu- 

 tation had preceded him, and he was most cordially received 

 by American scientists. Before leaving Europe he had made 

 through Lyell an engagement to deliver at the Lowell Insti- 

 tute, Boston, a course of lectures on The Plan of Creation, 

 especially in the Animal Kingdom. His audiences were so well 

 pleased that after the completion of this course he undertook 

 one on glaciers, also in Boston, which was highly successful. The 

 next summer he took a small house at East Boston and gath- 

 ered around him a corps of naturalists and illustrators, among 

 them being Count Frangois de Pourtales, who had accompanied 

 him to this country, E. Desor, and Jaques Burkhardt. He also 

 made journeys to visit men of science or to explore interest- 

 ing localities, and the following winter lectured in Boston and 

 other cities. Before this winter was over, in February, 1848, 

 came the proclamation of the French republic, and then all 

 Europe was in turmoil. The canton of Neuchatel had been a 

 dependency of Prussia, which explains why Agassiz was in the 

 pay of the Prussian king. The republican party at once rose 

 up in Neuchatel and carried the canton into the Swiss confed- 

 eracy. As a consequence, Agassiz was honourably discharged 

 from his commission. The Lawrence Scientific School was 

 being organized about this time in connection with Harvard 

 College. Mr. Abbott Lawrence, its founder, offered the chair 

 of Natural History in this school to Agassiz, who accepted it, 

 and held the position till his death. 



The Swiss naturalist now took up his abode in Cambridge, 

 and became a leading factor in the scientific development of 

 the Western republic. He soon had the pleasure of welcoming 

 to the shores of America Guyot and others of his old friends, 

 who were dislodged by the overturn in Europe. The death of 

 his wife soon broke another of his own ties to the Old World. 



Delightful facilities for research were afforded to Agassiz in 

 the course of his first summer in America by excursions on the 

 United States Coast Survey steamer Bibb, then employed in 



