LOUIS AGASSIZ 59 



whelming interest of something new 

 diverted him from his former pursuit, 

 to which he always expected to return. 

 And, as akin to this, we notice the 

 variety of his work and his readiness to 

 take up any new subject, without allow- 

 ing himself to be bound to his specialty. 

 Agassiz had a horror of intellectual red 

 tape, and a lively interest in everything 

 beneath the visiting moon. His work 

 on glaciers was wholly different from 

 the other things he had in hand, and 

 yet his name is as intimately associated 

 with the ice age as it is with fossil fishes. 

 Science is one, as he was fond of repeat- 

 ing ; yet he used to say also that no 

 investigator could afford to be without 

 a specialty, lest he miss a proper stand- 

 ard for exact and for comprehensive 

 knowledge. One subject, he said, should 

 be like a surveyor's arbitrary base line, 

 to which all other lines are referred for 

 comparison. 

 Next in the personal habits that af- 



