Jan. 28, 1886] 



NA TURE 



291 



public and private collections have greatly increased, and 

 the acilities for transport and for comparison of speci- 

 men with specimen have been enormously augmented. 

 Those who revise the work of the great pioneer in fossil 

 ichthyology will no doubt find much to amend, and no 

 one knew this better than he himself. But hey will not 

 forget the difficulties under whic worked, and which 



he so pathetically describes. It was an enormous service 

 to science to group and describe, as he did, all that was 

 then known of the fishes of the past. 



During the years in which Agassiz was engaged upon 

 these and kindred researches he often turned his eyes 

 wistfully to America as a land where many of the pro- 

 blems that so profoundly interested him could be even 

 better studied than in Europe. There were many 

 obstacles in the way of his crossing the Atlantic. In 

 1833 he had married the sister of his old college friend, 

 Braun, and a young family was growing up round him. 

 The emoluments of his Professorship at Neuchatel were 

 scanty enough even for his domestic needs, and he always 

 had scientific work on hand that could not make pro- 

 gress without money. At last, however, he saw his way 

 to visit America and pay the expenses of the journey by 

 lecturing. 



It was in the beginning of October 1846 that Agassiz 

 arrived in Boston. Intending at first merely to make a 

 lecturing tour, seeing what he could of the country and 

 the people, but returning eventually to his home and its 

 duties at Neuchatel, he was gradually led to prolong his 

 stay in the United States. His pleasant, genial ways, his 

 captivating enthusiasm as a naturalist, and his activity of 

 mind and body, gained him many friends ; and at last, 

 in the early part of 1848, he was offered and accepted the 

 Chair of Natural History in a scientific school then or- 

 ganised in connection with Harvard University. Thence- 

 forward he became an American citizen, and the record 

 of his life is that of the growth of a remarkable personal 

 influence which, holding up constantly before the public 

 the claims of natural science for recognition, carried 

 away all kinds of obstacles, personal, political, and finan- 

 cial, and planted firmly in the national mind a deep 

 respect for scientific worth and the value of scientific 

 training — an influence too which powerfully affected the 

 young intellects that came in contact with it, kindling in 

 them a spirit of brotherly co-operation and emulation in 

 the study of nature. Without following the details of his 

 busy and useful career, we may note the frequent excur- 

 sions to distant regions for the purpose of gaining fresh 

 materials for study. Thus we find the Professor at one 

 time navigating the bays and creeks of Lake Superior ; 

 at another exploring the Florida reefs ; then sailing up 

 the Amazon and investigating its natural history ; or 

 dredging among the West Indies ; studying glaciers in 

 the Straits of Magellan, and voyaging up the western 

 coast of America to San Francisco. Of these various 

 expeditions narratives were published giving a pleasant 

 picture of the life of the naturalists and of the chief 

 scientific results obtained by them. Turning over the 

 reports, we every now and then come upon some preg- 

 nant suggestion, some luminous generalisation, or some 

 significant deduction, showing how the characteristic 

 breadth of grasp and clearness of insight had under- 

 gone no diminution by transference to the New World. 



What, for instance, can be more suggestive than the 

 sentence with which Agassiz begins one of his reports on 

 these deep-sea dredgings } " From what I have seen of 

 the deep-sea bottom, I am already led to infer that 

 among the rocks forming the bulk 'of the stratified crust 

 of our globe, from the oldest to the youngest formation, 

 there are probably none which have been formed in very 

 deep waters." In this conclusion and in his inference 

 that the oceanic and continental areas have retained from 

 the beginning the same general positions, he anticipates 

 some of the most remarkable results of later research. 

 Again, how prescient was his expectation that the deeper 

 sea would show relics of older types of life that had 

 vanished from the shallower waters ! 



One of the most important of Agassiz's labours in 

 America was the founding of the Museum of Comparative 

 Zoology at Cambridge — a museum which should not only 

 present an orderly reflection of the structure and history 

 of the whole animal creation, past and present, but which 

 should contain such ample store of duplicates as to offer 

 to students unlimited means of practical study, and should 

 thus become one of the great centres for the radiation of 

 knowledge throughout the community. To the realisa- 

 tion of his dream of founding such a museum he devoted 

 the best energies of the last twenty years of his life, and 

 lived to see it established and recognised as one of the 

 great scientific institutions of the world. Full of labours 

 to the last, happy in the hearty recognition of his scien- 

 tific contemporaries, happier still in troops of friends in 

 the Old World and in the New, and soothed by the 

 tender affection of a loved home circle, Agassiz died on 

 December 14, 1873. 



The memoir which is the subject of this article has 

 been written by his widow, whom he married in America 

 after the death of his first wife. It is a most interesting 

 narrative, bringing before us the man as he was, and, 

 though making no pretence to appraise his scientific 

 work, yet giving a graphic picture of the conditions under 

 which the work was done. A simple boulder from the 

 glacier of the Aar rests above his grave in the cemetery 

 at Mount Auburn ; a few sapling pine-trees sent from his 

 old home in Switzerland throw their shadow over stone 

 and grass. And no more fitting memorial could have 

 been added to these tributes of aftection than the story of 

 his life so simply and gracefully told by Mrs. Agassiz. 



Arch. Geikie 



OUR BOOK SHELF 

 Die dusscrcn inechanischcn Werk-ieuge der Thiere. \'on 



Vitus Graber. (Leipzig: G. Freytag, 1886.) 

 This little work appears as the 44th and 45th of a 

 series which, under the title " Das Wissen der Gegen- 

 wart," is published at Leipzig. The series embraces 

 works on Astronomy, Geology, Physics, Biology, as well 

 as treatises on History, Geography, Philosophy, and Art, 

 all of which are issued at the extremely low price of one 

 mark each. The present work consists of two parts, each 

 of about 220 pages, with illustrations, and treats of the 

 mechanics of the animal machine. The first part is 

 concerned with the Vertebrates — where the construction 

 is more complex — and in eight chapters we have the 

 first principles of mechanics, so far as they relate to 

 animals in general, discussed, and then the actions in- 

 volved in locomotion, prehension, &c., are treated of in 



