26 With Feet to the Earth 



and jelly-fish and inhaling the strong sci- 

 entific odor in Harvard's natural history 

 museum. Occasionally some of us would 

 go to hear Agassiz lecture on mollusks or 

 glaciers, for visitors were admitted to the 

 gallery, and his simplicity of words and 

 manner, his wise, genial face, his rapid 

 drawings, and his absolute command of his 

 subject fixed the attention of the youngest 

 listener. In my little cabinet is a speci- 

 men whose counterpart Professor Hitchcock 

 labelled, with admirable candor, "A Con- 

 cretion, or Something Else." Mine I took 

 to Agassiz and named its locality. He 

 turned it in his hand for a moment, smiled 

 pleasantly at the juvenile interest in such 

 a matter, and said, in a convincing tone, 

 " Concretion." From that moment I was 

 loyal to the faith that Professor Agassiz 

 knew more than any other man in the world. 

 In the field behind the museum we would 

 often find fragments of fossils, coral, and 

 strange creatures of the deep, the refuse of 

 the laboratories, which we took home with 

 solemn joy, as if their use by the scientist 

 had given to them a high distinction. 



