Record. xxxv 



pupils of the Lycee,^ in whom he awakened a living interest 

 in science by bringing them into immediate touch with the facts 

 and phenomena of nature. From 1855 to 1863 he took a lead- 

 ing part in the school for young ladies conducted, at Cambridge, 

 by Mrs. Agassiz and his son and elder daughter; giving extended 

 courses of illustrated daily lectures in which, in consecutive 

 years, he reviewed important chapters of his life work. 



With his special students, in the Lawrence Scientific School 

 and at the Museum of Comparative Zoology, he insisted, first 

 and last, on the cultivation of the habit of direct, accurate, and 

 exhaustive observation. A new pupil was given a specimen, 

 and was told to find out for himself all that he could about 

 it. From time to time the master would look in upon him to 

 ask what he had seen, and would perhaps direct his attention 

 to the fact that he had overlooked an important feature which 

 he had possibly regarded as too obvious to be noted. This con- 

 templation of the specimen w^as prolonged, day after day, until 

 the student, brought face to face with the proof of his ineptness, 

 learned to apprehend something of the meaning and scope of 

 scientific observation. After a time a second specimen was 

 given, to be studied in conjunction with the first, and this was 

 followed in turn by others, with the result that the protracted 

 lesson developed gradually into a practical exercise on the rela- 

 tions of the original specimen to specimens representative of 

 other species, genera, families, orders, classes, and types. 



Agassiz was a great popular lecturer. Throughout the four- 

 teen years of his life at Neuchatel he delivered course after course 

 of public lectures, awakening and maintaining general interest 

 in his work by telling of his own observations and explaining their 

 wider significance. The last of these courses, ''On the Plan of 

 Creation," was given in the spring of 1845; his first course in 

 English, before the Lowell Institute in Boston, December, 1846, 



* It was only in 1838 that the Academie de NeucMtel was founded, by royal 

 decree; the formal inauguration took place November 18, 1841, 



For incidents of Agassiz's boyhood, and ];eferences to his life down to the 

 time of his coming to America, the writer of this sketch is indebted mainly 

 to the admirable memoir entitled "Louis Agassiz, his Life and Corres- 

 pondence," by EUzabeth Gary Agassiz, Boston, 1885. A few extracts in 

 Agassiz's own words are indicated by quotation marks. To the writer 

 of these lines this memoir, the tribute of his second wife, the devoted com- 

 panion of the last twenty-three years of his life, apjjeals as one of the 

 truest as well as most charming of extant biographies. 



