34 ELIZABETH GARY AGASSIZ 



their moorings in Europe by the same disturbances 

 which had prevented him from returning there. . . . 



The house stood in a small plot of ground, the cul- 

 tivation of which was the delight of Papa Christinat. 

 It soon became a miniature zoological garden where 

 all sorts of experiments in breeding and observa- 

 tions on the habits of animals were carried on. A tank 

 for turtles and a small alligator in one corner, a 

 large hutch for rabbits in another, a cage for eagles 

 against the wall, a tame bear and a family of opos- 

 sums, made up the menagerie, varied from time to 

 time by new arrivals. 



Among the many friends whom Agassiz made in Cam- 

 bridge he had few more intimate than Professor Cornelius 

 Conway Felton, later president of Harvard University, 

 but at that time professor of Greek. He had married 

 Mary Cary, and it was at his house that Agassiz first met 

 her sister Elizabeth. The occasion was a dinner given by 

 Professor Felton to Agassiz and a few other Cambridge 

 men, and Elizabeth and Caroline Cary had come out from 

 Boston to help Mrs. Felton entertain her guests after 

 dinner. No reminiscences from an evening that had such 

 important consequences have been preserved beyond the 

 reply made by Agassiz to a question from one of the com- 

 pany about the curious formation of the head of the scul- 

 pin, "Oh, God must have His leetle joke," an answer 

 that recalls his habit of referring to any fish that he hap- 

 pened to be describing in his lectures as "this leetle in- 

 diveedual." 



Two people more unlike in their previous environment 

 than Agassiz and Elizabeth Cary it would not have been 



