7. 36.] TO JOHN TORREY. 345 
You have not told me about Chapman’s queer plant 
Unless Nuttall has arrived, which I do not hear of, 
it is too late for him till next fall; for his object was 
to secure three months’ absence out of the present 
year, and three out of next. 
January 24, 1847. 
Agassiz has finished his lectures with great eclat — 
most admirable course — and on Thursday evening 
last he volunteered an additional one in French, which 
was fine. 
I gave you the explanation you asked for in my 
last letter, which I still hope you will find. What I 
then said about the excellent tone of his lectures gen- 
erally was fully sustained to the last; they have been 
good lectures on natural theology. The whole spirit 
was vastly above that of any geological course I ever 
heard, his refutation of Lamarckian or “ Vestiges ” 
views most pointed and repeated. The whole course 
was planned on a very high ground, and his references 
to the Creator were so natural and unconstrained as to 
show that they were never brought in for effect. 
The points that I. A. Smith has got hold of were a 
few words at the close of his lecture on the geographi- 
eal distribution of animals, in which he applied the 
views he maintains (which are those of Schouw still 
further extended) to man. 
He thinks that animals and plants were originally 
created in numbers, occupying considerable area, per- 
haps almost as large as they now occupy. I should 
1 A relative left Nuttall a comfortable little estate and property on 
condition that he should not be away from it m han three months 
in the year. He managed to come to es again by nine the 
three last months of one year and the three first of the next. 
