Ixxiv OBITUARY NOTICES OF MEMBERS DECEASED. 



fessor Agassiz's distant house in Newport with an uncommon 

 species of marine Hfe for investigation, and his interest in the land 

 crabs of Cuba and the minor animals of the West was great; but 

 his mind ran rather to the larger cosmic sciences, because it was of 

 large mould, and was used to push ahead into speculative paths. 



He lectured more than once on the moon and the Alps and 

 glaciers, and his overflowing store of facts came forth fluently and 

 without special preparation. He made a small but select collection 

 of such minerals as appealed to him from the industrial as well as 

 the scientific side; and he had gathered about him some preserved 

 specimens of curious animal life — and be it said to his great credit 

 as a humane lover of nature, he was insistent that no animal or bird 

 on property belonging to him should be wantonly killed. I have 

 heard him repeat again and again that he liked the wild things let 

 alone in their native lairs. 



His most intimate taste was for gems, rather as natural phe- 

 nomena than from intrinsic worth ; and his keenness in this field is 

 fully illustrated by an episode at a dinner table where many guests 

 passed around a great emerald belonging to one of the ladies. 

 When it came to Mr, Wharton, there was a pause as he was asked 

 what he thought of it. He said, with unflinching honesty, " It would 

 be of immense value if it were genuine." 



His own collection of gems was not at all exhaustive, but it had 

 been made with discrimination and he loved to go over the stones 

 with some congenial hearer and give forth rare funds of interesting 

 data concerning each stone or species. 



But the speculative side of science was, as I have said, more to 



his liking than the exact. He was a sort of discoverer garbed in the 



limiting drab of Friendly convention. H his spirit ever existed 



before, it must have inhabited the body of a Cortez or a Cabot. He 



was always seeking the ultimate ; never satisfied to rest. He would 



quote with deep feeling the lines of Tennyson on " Ulysses " : 



" It little profits that an idle king 

 By this still hearth, among these barren crags, 

 Matched with an aged wife, I mete and dole 

 Unequal laws unto a savage race, 

 That hoard and sleep and feed, and know not me. 

 I cannot rest from travel, I will drink 

 Life to the lees:" 



