398 ELIZABETH GARY AGASSIZ 



the beauty of his animated face, his enthusiasm for 

 his subject which he inspired in others, made the great 

 attraction. For eight years, with few interruptions, he 

 gave daily lectures to us girls, always illustrating by 

 specimens, maps, and by drawing on the blackboard 

 in his incomparable manner. 



His courses of lectures comprised zoology and 

 botany, geology and embryology. These lectures in- 

 cluded the classification of plants and their geograph- 

 ical distribution. He also gave us his famous lec- 

 tures on glaciers he having originated the glacial 

 theory and an elementary course of anthropology 

 and ethnology. 



It was a wonderful gift of his to keep a classroom of 

 girls alert and interested while describing the struc- 

 ture of a jelly-fish, the distinction between Discophora 

 and Ctenophora. Mrs. Agassiz is kind enough to say 

 of us: "He never had an audience more responsive 

 and more eager to learn than the sixty or seventy 

 girls who gathered at the close of the morning to hear 

 his daily lecture, nor did he ever give to any audience 

 lectures more carefully prepared, more comprehensive 

 in their range of subjects, more lofty in their tone of 

 thought." 



He spoke several times of the difficulty of translat- 

 ing to us, in simple terms, the technical language of 

 Science, so that we could understand him. He gave us 

 a deep respect for the laborious collecting of scientific 

 facts and a mistrust and dislike of what is superficial. 

 At the same time his ideality appealed strongly to us, 

 and some of us listened with tears in our eyes as he 



