306 LOUIS AGASSIZ. 



and finally finish my studies at Paris, where I 

 would stay about five years. Then, at the age of 

 twenty-five, I could begin to write." 



At this early age, then, he was thinking of being 

 an author ! 



He begged his parents to defer the business 

 project for two years, that he might study at the 

 College of Lausanne. They were willing and glad 

 to please their boy ; but they knew from experience 

 the ills of poverty, and they hoped to save him 

 from it by a wise choice of a life-work. 



They gratified him, however, and he went to 

 Lausanne. His uncle, Dr. Mathias Mayor, a physi- 

 cian of Lausanne, seeing that the boy was deeply 

 interested in anatomy, advised that he should 

 study medicine ; so this was decided upon, as being 

 more in accord with Louis' tastes than business. 



As poor Viiicenzio Galileo found it a difficult 

 matter to make a wool merchant or a doctor out 

 of a boy destined to be a man of science, so did 

 the father of Louis Agassiz. 



At seventeen, Louis left Lausanne for the medi- 

 cal school at Zurich. Here he became the friend 

 as well as pupil of Professor Schinz, who held the 

 chair of Natural History and Physiology. He 

 gave young Agassiz a key to his private library, 

 and also to his collection of birds ; of course, the 

 love for natural history grew stronger. Both 

 boys, for Auguste had come to Zurich with his 

 brother, were too poor to buy books even when they 

 cost but a few shillings a volume. The Swiss minis- 



