A GASSIZ A T PENIKESE. 1 39 



The first plan suggested was that of calling the 

 teachers of the country together for a summer out- 

 ing on the island of Nantucket. Before the site 

 was chosen, Mr. John Anderson, a wealthy tobacco- 

 merchant in New York City, offered to Agassiz the 

 use of his island of Penikese, and an endowment of 

 fifty thousand dollars in money, if he would per- 

 manently locate this scientific " camp-meeting" on 

 the island. To this gift Mr. C. W. Galloupe, of 

 Boston, added the use of his large yacht, the 

 " Sprite." Thus was founded the Anderson School 

 of Natural History on the island of Penikese. 



Penikese is a little island containing about sixty 

 acres of very rocky ground, a pile of stones with 

 intervals of soil. It is the last and least of the 

 Elizabeth Islands, lying to the south of Buzzard's 

 Bay, on the south coast of Massachusetts. The 

 whole cluster was once a great terminal moraine of 

 rocks and rubbish of all sorts, brought down from 

 the mainland by some ancient glacier, and by it 

 dropped into the ocean off the heel of Cape Cod. 

 The sea has broken up the moraine into eight little 

 islands by wearing tide channels between hill and 

 hill. The names of these islands are recorded in 

 the jingle which the children of that region learn 

 before they go to school, 



" Naushon, Nonamesset, Uncatena, and Wepecket, 

 Nashawena, Pesquinese, Cuttyhunk, and Penikese." 



And Penikese, last and smallest of them, lies, a little 

 forgotten speck, out in the ocean, eighteen miles 

 south of New Bedford. It contained two hills, 

 joined together by a narrow isthmus, a little har- 



