NA TURE 



289 



THURSDAY, lANUARY 28, 18S6 



LOUIS AG ASS I Z 

 Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence. Edited 

 by Elizabeth Cary Agassiz. Two Volumes, 8vo. 

 (London : Macmillan and Co., 1885.) 



SELDOM has the influence of early environment been 

 more marked in a scientific career than in the life 

 of Louis Agassiz. Born in 1807 at the little village of 

 Mojier, in the plains of Switzerland, he passed his child- 

 hood on the shores of the Lake of Morat, the waters of 

 which were a perennial source of delight to him. He 

 took more special interest in its living things ; knew the 

 haunts and habits of its fishes, and could lure them to 

 him by various ingenious boyish spells, or track them to 

 their hiding-places in the old walls that were lapped by 

 the water. He began to collect birds, insects, shells, and 

 other objects long before he had acquired any book-know- 

 ledge of natural history. Between the Lake of Morat 

 and the larger expanse of the Lake of Neuchatel lies 

 a strip of fertile country rich in woodlands and flowers, 

 and full of bird-life. On the further side of Lake Morat, 

 towering above the scene of the great battle wherein the 

 Swiss routed the army of Charles the Bold, rise the far 

 snowy summits of the Bernese Oberland. Nursed amid 

 these surroundings, and encouraged and guided by wise 

 parental care, the child most truly was father to the 

 man. His intense love of nature and of all living crea- 

 tures developed into the enthusiasm of one of the fore- 

 most naturalists of the time. His childish devotion to 

 the fishes of Lake Morat settled into the earnest and 

 untiring spirit of research among living and extinct 

 fishes which made him the leading ichthyologist of Europe. 

 His passion for the mountains with their snow-fields and 

 glaciers grew into that clear insight and power of philo- 

 sophical generalisation which have placed the name of 

 Louis Agassiz at the very head of the pioneers by whom 

 the story of the wonderful Ice Age has been unravelled. 



The ardent boy with his eager pursuit of natural history 

 was designed for commerce. His father, a poor country 

 clergyman, had no fortune at his disposal which could 

 save his son from the necessity of choosing a profession. 

 But the studies and discipline of school life by no means 

 checked the boy's longing for some career that would 

 enable him to follow his bent towards the prosecution of 

 science. He begged for two years more of the College 

 at Lausanne, and this was granted by his parents, who, 

 though they seem to have been quite aware of his pecu- 

 liar abilities, never allowed themselves to lose sight of 

 the necessity that their son should at all events qualify 

 himself for some honourable means of making his own 

 livelihood. His future appears to have been considerably 

 influenced by a medical uncle at Lausanne, who, recog- 

 nising the lad's special bent, suggested that he should 

 take to medicine. This advice being followed, young 

 Agassiz went for two years to the Medical School at 

 \ Zurich, and then, at the age of nineteen, betook himself 

 to the life of a German student at Heidelberg. It was 

 there that his scientific career received its first great im- 

 petus, and that it became certain that, though he might 

 persevere with his medical studies and take his degree. 

 Vol. XXXIII.— No. 848 



he would ultimately distinguish himself and make his 

 career, not as a physician, but as a naturalist. At 

 Heidelberg he laid the foundations of some of the most 

 precious and enduring friendships of his life, more parti- 

 cularly with Alexander Braun the botanist, whose sister 

 he afterwards married, and with whom and Schimper he 

 next year migrated to Munich, famous at the time for the 

 varied attainments of its professors of science and philo- 

 sophy. Entering there on a wider field of study, Agassiz 

 and his comrades distinguished themselves among the 

 students by their enthusiastic devotion to natural science. 

 Meeting at each other's rooms, they formed a band 

 known outside as "the Little Academy," discoursing on 

 all manner of questions, starting new problems, pro- 

 posing solutions for old ones, and creating so much 

 interest in their proceedings, that even learned professors 

 were sometimes to be seen among their listeners. 



It was but natural that in the midst of such a life the 

 drudgery of the medical profession should grow more 

 and more irksome. Again and again warning comes 

 from home that the practical aim of his University 

 studies must not be lost sight of, and that he must surely 

 qualify himself to practise as a doctor. His mother's 

 strong common sense would from time to time brush 

 away the golden haze through which the hopeful enthusiast 

 looked at his prospects. In her letters too, she warned 

 him against his " mania for rushing full gallop into the 

 future," engaging in too many different undertakings, and 

 wasting by diffusion an energy which would carry him 

 successfully to his goal, if he would only concentrate it 

 upon what was essential for the purpose. Long before 

 he took his medical degree his power of original research 

 in ichthyology was widely known, and Martius placed in 

 his hands for description the Brazilian fishes left un- 

 described by Spix. This work was completed and pub- 

 lished in 1 829, when the young author was only twenty- 

 two years of age. Next year he gratified his parents by 

 formally taking the degree of M.D. 



But the prospect of settling down as a country medical 

 practitioner was more than ever distasteful to him, though 

 there seemed no very clear outlook in any other direction. 

 He himself, however, was full of hope. His Brazilian 

 fishes had brought him no money indeed, but it had 

 given him a reputation throughout Europe as one of the 

 rising naturalists of the day. Already he was full of 

 schemes for the production of a work on fossil fishes, 

 and he had actually made considerable progress in the 

 preparation of a monograph on fresh-water fishes. He 

 felt sure that he could command his own terms from 

 publishers, and that the sale 'of the works would enable 

 him to live in the quiet way he desired to do. So he 

 went home for a year, which he spent in increasing his 

 collections of natural history — now large and valuable — 

 and in prosecuting the works on which he had been 

 occupied at Munich. But his ambition to take a leading 

 place among the naturalists of Europe, and the necessity 

 for increasing his knowledge by study in some of the best 

 museums of the Continent, led him at last irresistibly to 

 Paris, where he arrived towards the end of the year 1831. 

 From Cuvier he received much kindness. The veteran 

 naturalist had made some progress with a work on fossil 

 fishes, but when he saw what Agassiz had done and 

 proposed to continue, he generously presented him with 



