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SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. V. No. 112. 



boyhood he looked on the world as if it 

 and he were made for each other, and on 

 the vast diversity of living things as if he 

 were there with authority to take mental 

 possession of them all. His habit of col- 

 lecting began in childhood, and during his 

 long life knew no bounds save those that 

 separate the things of nature from those of 

 human art. Already in his student years, 

 in spite of the most stringent poverty, his 

 whole scheme of existence was that of one 

 predestined to greatness, who takes that 

 fact for granted, and stands forth immedi- 

 ately as a scientific leader of men. 



His passion for knowing living things 

 was combined with a rapidity of observa- 

 tion and a capacity to recognize them again 

 and remember everything about them, 

 which all his life it seemed an easy tri- 

 umph and delight for him to exercise, and 

 which never allowed him to waste a mo- 

 ment in doubts about the commensurability 

 of his powers with his tasks. If ever a 

 person lived by faith, he did. When a boy 

 of twenty, with an allowance of two hun- 

 dred and fifty dollars a year, he maintained 

 an artist attached to his employ, a cus- 

 tom which never afterwards was departed 

 from, except when he maintained two or 

 three. He lectured from the very outset 

 to all those who would hear him. "I 

 feel within myself the strength of a whole 

 generation," he wrote to his father at that 

 time, and launched himself upon the publi- 

 cation of his costly ' Poissons Fossiles ' with 

 no clear vision of the quarter from whence 

 the payment might be expected to come. 



At Neuchatel (where between the ages 

 of twenty-five and thirty he enjoyed a 

 stipend that varied from four hundred to 

 six hundred dollars) he organized a regular 

 academy of natural history, with its mu- 

 seum, managing by one expedient or an- 

 other to employ artists, secretaries and 

 assistants, and to keep a lithographic and 

 printing establishment of his own employed 



with the work that he put forth. Fishes, 

 fossil and living, echinoderms and glaciers, 

 transfigured themselves under his hand, 

 and at thirty he was already at the zenith 

 of his reputation, recognized by all as one 

 of those naturalists in the unlimited sense, 

 one of those folio copies of mankind, like 

 Linnseus apd Cuvier, who aim at nothing 

 less than an acquaintance with the whole 

 of animated nature. His genius for classify- 

 ing was simply marvellous ; and, as his 

 latest biographer says, nowhere had a single 

 person ever given so decisive an impulse to 

 natural history. 



Such was the human being who on an 

 October morning fifty years ago disembarked 

 at our port, bringing his hungry heart along 

 with him, his confidence in his destiny, and 

 his imagination full of plans. The only 

 particular resource he was assured of was 

 one course of Lowell Lectures. But of one 

 general resource he always was assured, 

 having always counted on it and never 

 found it to fail — and that was the good will 

 of every fellow-creature in whose presence 

 he could find an opportunity to describe 

 his aims. His belief in these was so intense 

 and unqualified that he could not conceive 

 of others not feeling the furtherance of 

 them to be a duty binding also upon them. 

 Velle non diseitur, as Seneca says, — Strength 

 of desire must be born with a man; it can't 

 be taught. And Agassiz came before one 

 with such enthusiasm glowing in his coun- 

 tenance — such a persuasion I'adiating from 

 his person that his projects were the sole 

 things really fit to interest man as man — 

 that he was absolutely irresistible. He 

 came, in Byron's words, with victory beam- 

 ing from his breast, and every one went 

 down before him, some yielding him money, 

 some time, some specimens and some labor, 

 but all contributing their applause and their 

 godspeed. And so, living among us from 

 month to month and from year to year, 

 with no relation to prudence except his 



