Early Naturalists 39 



sent them forth to become leaders of biology in America. 

 Indeed, it was as teacher, rather than as investigator, that 

 Agassiz's influence was most widely felt. Possessed of a 

 compelling personality, remarkable diction and inspiring 

 enthusiasm, he left an impress upon biology in this country 

 that can never be effaced. He was the founder of the Museum 

 of Comparative Zoology of Harvard University, while his 

 summer school at Penikese in 1873 was the forerunner of 

 biological stations in America. A disciple of Cuvier, he was 

 ever an ardent champion of his views and an opponent, albeit 

 a warm personal friend of Darwin. 



Pupil of Agassiz at Neuchatel, and later his co-worker in 

 America, was Girard, who prepared the report on the reptiles 

 of the Wilkes expedition. Girard was better known, however, 

 for his work on flslies, in the course of which he studied much 

 of the material collected by the U. S. Surveys. 



While exploring naturalists were busy gathering the un- 

 known fruits of our virgin fields and forests, their colleagues 

 in the dim and dusty rooms of museum and college were no 

 less busy in making known the results of their harvests. Dr. 

 Joseph Leidy, a Philadelphia physician, professor of anatomy 

 at the University of Pennsylvania and later professor of 

 natural history at Swarthmore College, was one of the most 

 noted of these early college and museum men. He is a striking 

 example of the "all around" naturalist of the early days, his 

 writings embracing a wealth of subjects of both extinct and 

 living animals, and ranging from the unicellular animals to 

 man. Of his notable works one of the earliest was his account 

 of the fossils from the "bad lands" of Nebraska, collected by 

 one of the surveys of the then (1850) Northwest Territory, 

 conducted by the geologist, David Day Owen, under the 

 direction of the U. S. Treasury Department. 



Colleagues of Leidy in the study of the fossils brought back 

 from the West by the government surveys, and by exploring 

 parties sent out by museums and colleges, were two men 

 whose names stand in the front rank of our palaeontologists — 

 Othniel Charles Marsh and Edward Drinker Cope. 



As professor of palaeontology at Yale, Marsh inaugurated 

 in 1870 a series of scientific expeditions into the Western 

 States, the results of which were the splendid collections of 

 vertebrate fossils of Yale and the U. S. National Museum, and 

 the stores of information about the pre-historic life of our con- 

 tinent which Marsh gave to the world and which soon made 

 him famous. His earlier expeditions were undertaken and 

 largely supported by himself, but after the organization of the 

 U. S. Geological Survey in 1879, he became connected with it 



