486 PIONEERS OF SCIENCE IN AMERICA. 



them from destruction. In that year a wooden building on 

 the college grounds was provided for their storage, and four 

 hundred dollars was allowed him as an annual grant toward 

 the expense of keeping them. Soon after this certain friends 

 subscribed twelve thousand dollars to purchase his collections, 

 thus relieving him and securing the precious material for Cam- 

 bridge permanently provided fire did not seize upon their 

 frail shelter and the jars of alcohol in which many of the speci- 

 mens were preserved, involving all in ruin. 



The creation of a great and systematically arranged zoo- 

 logical museum had been the dream of Agassiz's life. He 

 would have its collections so arranged as to show the relation 

 of each part of the animal kingdom to all others, so that it 

 might be a powerful means for training teachers of science in 

 the common schools, for illuminating the text-books of their 

 pupils, and for educating the general public. He would have, 

 also, in connection with it, laboratories for special students, 

 with abundance of duplicate specimens, and all the appliances 

 needed for their studies and researches. Fortunately, he was 

 able, in great measure, to attain his ideal. In 1858 Mr. Francis 

 C. Gray, to whom he had explained his purpose, died, leaving 

 by his will fifty thousand dollars for the establishment of a 

 Museum of Comparative Zoology. A grant of lands worth one 

 hundred thousand dollars was obtained from the Legislature of 

 Massachusetts, a private subscription of over seventy thousand 

 dollars was raised, and Harvard College gave an ample site 

 for a building. By these events Agassiz's vacation trip to 

 Europe in the summer that followed them was made doubly 

 happy. 



The plan of the museum building provided for a main struc- 

 ture three hundred and sixty-four feet long, with wings two hun- 

 dred and five feet long, the whole forming three sides of a 

 square. A section of the north wing, about eighty feet in 

 length, was built in i859-'6o, being sufficient for the time being. 

 One addition was made before Agassiz's death, and since then 

 the original plan has been filled out by successive additions. 

 As soon as the first portion was ready he set about installing 

 the collections in it. Its laboratories were soon open to stu- 

 dents, and from this time on his lectures, were given there. 

 These pursuits, with writing, now occupied him during the col- 

 lege year at Cambridge. Summers he spent at Nahant, a favour- 



