JANUARY 29, 1914] 
America. In the world of affairs he was known 
-as an extremely capable and successful mining 
man, who was said to employ his leisure moments 
in some sort of scientific study.” 
‘ The story of his numerous expeditions in tropical 
_ seas which became almost annual fixtures, since 
_he suffered severely in later life from exposure to 
the winter climate of New England, is given with 
some fullness in the present volume, and especi- 
ally good is the account of his series of investiga- 
tions of coral reefs and atolls in the West Indies, 
and in the Indian and Pacific oceans. These 
_ chapters will well repay the reader. 
But here I am more anxious to cite passages 
illustrating the personal qualities of Alexander 
Agassiz, first as shown in his deliberate applica- 
tion of the great wealth which he acquired by his 
own efforts so early in life, and secondly as ex- 
hibited in the contrast which in many respects he 
presents when compared with a man of an equally 
_ wide public reputation, his much-loved and gifted 
_ father Louis Agassiz. During his life Alexander 
Agassiz made contributions to the Museum and 
University of Harvard which amounted to three 
hundred thousand pounds sterling, and a further 
very considerable sum will eventually pass to the 
University which he has specially ear-marked to 
provide posts in the Museum for the maintenance 
of investigators who are to be free from the 
burden of class-teaching. On university matters I 
was in entire sympathy and accord with him. He 
deplored, in regard to Cambridge, Mass. (as noted 
in this book), the same antiquated and seemingly 
irremoyable errors in organisation, and the same 
failure to recognise the university as a great seat 
of living progressive science, which we still bravely 
struggle against in the old country . He wished 
to see American universities modelled on the 
German system. Writing not long ago of his 
expenditure for science, he says :— 
“While the sum total seems a large expenditure, 
and one which appeals to the public and to the 
University officials, I hope that my influence on 
science at Cambridge will not always be measured 
by the dollar standard, as it is so apt to be. 
What I care for far more is the recognition of 
the fact that, having the means, I have backed up 
my opinion of what was worth doing by a free 
expenditure of funds, and furthermore that I have 
since 1870 devoted my time as completely to the 
interest of the Museum as if I had been working 
on a salary of fifteen hundred a year. And that 
since that I have published the results of my work 
‘continuously, and hope to be judged by that, and 
not by the total I may have spent for the same. 
I want to go down as a man of science, and not 
to be temporarily known by a kind of cheap 
notoriety as an American millionaire.” 
NO. 2309, VOL. 92] 
NATURE 
603 
Whilst pouring out his fortune for science with 
one hand, he was (his son tells us) generous almost 
to a fault to his children with the other. 
Alexander Agassiz inherited from his father a 
love of science and an extraordinary ability and 
love for work; but his sensitive and apprehensive 
temperament he acquired directly from his mother. 
Father and son had less in common than may be 
supposed. The father’s optimism was always a 
cause of anxiety and trouble; the son possessed a 
singularly clear sight for the rocks ahead, and a 
very remarkable ability to steer his course clear 
of them. The older Agassiz, buoyant and robust, 
loved appreciation, was fond of teaching, and had 
a genius for stimulating his students. He had a 
large measure of the poetic and imaginative quality 
which is necessary for the making of an original 
discoverer. Alexander, retiring and reserved, had 
no gift or desire to excite popular interest; he 
hated notoriety, disliked teaching, and his intellec- 
tual life was devoted to research. He was ex- 
tremely cautious in speculation, and, indeed, on 
this account—though he rendered immense service 
to science by the accumulation of important facts 
and the discovery and description of new species 
often of great interest, and the exploration in a 
magnificent way of regions of the ocean previously 
unvisited—he yet is not the author of any great 
generalisation or theoretical advance in the science 
to which he devoted himself. 
As he matured and saw his way to large results, 
he aimed at the solution of two big problems; 
(1) the amount of variation from type that may be 
expected in a given period of geological time, as 
illustrated by the difference which has ensued in 
the oceanic fauna on the two sides of the Isthmus 
of Panama since the days when the Caribbean 
was virtually a bay of the Pacific. He made im- 
mense collections by means of large and costly 
expeditions, and employed pretty well all the 
specialists of Europe as well as America, and his 
own special knowledge of the Echinoids, to report 
on the material collected on each side of the 
Isthmus with this end in view. It is one of the 
tragedies of a life so full and richly employed as 
his was that his ‘‘ Panamic Report,” so long looked 
forward to, was never written. 
The other problem dealt with by Alexander 
Agassiz was that of the formation of coral reefs 
and atolls. He visited every coral island region 
in the world, and published richly illustrated 
surveys of them. He was opposed to Darwin’s 
theory of the origin of coral atolls by the sub- 
sidence of the areas in which they occur. And 
he certainly succeeded in showing that the views 
advocated by Darwin and by Dana are not capable 
