TURTLE EGGS FOR AGASSIZ 



t is one of the wonders of the world 

 that so few books are written. With 

 every human being a possible book, 

 and with many a human being 

 capable of becoming more books 

 than the world could contain, is it not amazing that 

 the books of men are so few ? And so stupid ! 



I took down, recently, from the shelves of a 

 great public library, the four volumes of Agassiz's 

 "Contributions to the Natural History of the Uni- 

 ted States." I doubt if anybody but the charwoman, 

 with her duster, had touched those volumes for 

 twenty-five years. They are an excessively learned, 

 a monumental, an epoch-making work, the fruit 

 of vast and heroic labors, with colored plates on 

 stone, showing the turtles of the United States, 

 and their embryology. The work was published 

 more than half a century ago (by subscription) ; 

 but it looked old beyond its years — massive, 

 heavy, weathered, as if dug from the rocks. It was 

 difficult to feel that Agassiz could have written it 



