Record. xxxiii 



June 3, 1907. 



President Woodward in the chair; attendance, forty-one. 



Professor Giovanni Capellini, president of the Committee of 

 Arrangements for the Aldrovandi Tercentennial Celebration, 

 was requested to represent the Academy at the celebration. 



Professor R. H. Fernald presented an illustrated paper on 

 "The Conservation of Our Fuel Resources Made Possible by 

 the Introduction of Producer-Gas." 



Professor C. M. Woodward presented some notes on the 

 mechanical problems of aerial navigation. 



Jean Louis Rodolphe Agassiz. 



May 28, 1807— December 14, 1873. 



The President called the attention of the Academy to the fact 

 that the centennial of the birth of the great naturalist, Louis 

 Agassiz, had fallen on May 28, 1907. He referred to the privi- 

 lege which he had enjoyed, as a Harvard student, of hearing 

 Professor Agassiz in courses open to undergraduates, and called 

 on Dr. John Green, who had known him more intimately, 

 to give some account of the man and his work. 



Dr. Green said that his personal acquaintance with Agassiz 

 dated from 1855, when he began post-graduate work in the 

 anatomical laboratory of Professor Jeffries Wyman where 

 Agassiz was a frequent visitor. Totally unlike in temperament, 

 the two great naturalists were the closest of friends, each in per- 

 fect sympathy with the work of the other, each giving of 

 his best in mutual confidence and appreciation. Wyman, single- 

 minded, painstaking seeker after truth, careful and deUberate 

 in his deductions; Agassiz, keen and indefatigable in research, 

 ever ready with an apposite comparison or suggestion of some 

 broad generalization; each estimated at its just value the un- 

 questioned authority of the other as a student and interpreter 

 of nature. 



Impressions of Agassiz were deepened by contact with him at 

 the meetings of the Boston Society of Natural History, under the 

 presidency of Wyman. There he contributed largely of his 

 newest observations and his conceptions of their probable or 

 possible significance. The life and methods of the deep student of 

 nature were disclosed, revealing the man more admirable even 



