Febraeuy 19, 1897.] 



SCIENCE. 



287 



pertinacious violation of all her usual laws, 

 he on the whole achieved the compass of 

 his desires, studied the geology and fauna 

 of a continent, trained a generation of zo- 

 ologists, founded one of the chief museums 

 of the world, gave a new impulse to scientific 

 education in America, and died the idol of 

 the public, as well as of his circle of im- 

 mediate pupils and friends. 



The secret of it all was that, while his 

 scientific ideals were an integral part of his 

 being, something that he never forgot or 

 laid aside, so that wherever he went he 

 came forward as ' the Professor,' and ialked 

 ' shop ' to every person, young or old, gi-eat 

 or little, learned or unlearned, with whom 

 he was thrown, he was at the same time so 

 commanding a presence, so curious and in- 

 quiring, so responsive and expansive, and 

 so generous and reckless of himself and of 

 his own, that every one said immediately, 

 " Here is no musty savant^ but a man, a 

 great man, a man on the heroic scale, not 

 to serve whom is avarice and sin." He ele- 

 vated the popular notion of what a student 

 of Nature could be. Since Benjamin Frank- 

 lin we had never had among us a person of 

 more popularly impressive type. He did 

 not wait for students to come to him ; he 

 made inquiry for promising youthful col- 

 lectors, and when he heard of one he 

 wrote, inviting and urging him to come. 

 Thus there is hardly one now of the Ameri- 

 can naturalists of my generation whom 

 Agassiz did not train. Nay, more ; he 

 said to every one that a year or two of 

 natural historj^, studied as he understood 

 it, would give the best training for any 

 kind of mental work. Sometimes he was 

 amusingly naif in this regard, as when he 

 offered to put his whole museum at the dis- 

 position of the Emperor of Brazil if he 

 would but come and labor there. And I 

 well remember how certain officials of the 

 Brazilian Empire smiled at the cordiality 

 with which he pressed upon them a similar 



invitation. But it had a great effect. 

 Natural history must, indeed, be a godlike 

 pursuit, if such a man as this can so adore 

 it, people said ; and the very definition 

 and meaning of the word naturalist under- 

 went a favorable alteration in the common 

 mind. 



Certain sayings of Agassiz's, as the 

 famous one that he ' had no time for mak- 

 ing money,' and his habit of naming his 

 occupation simply as that of ' teacher,' have 

 caught the public fancy and are permanent 

 benefactions. "We all enjoy more consider- 

 ation for the fact that he manifested himself 

 here thus before us in his day. 



He was a splendid example of the tem- 

 perament that looks forward and not back- 

 ward, and never wastes a moment in regrets 

 for the irrevocable. I had the privilege of 

 admission to his society during the Thayer 

 expedition to Brazil. I well remember at 

 night, as we all swung in our hammocks in 

 the fairy-like moonlight, on the deck of the 

 steamer that throbbed its way up the Ama- 

 zon between the forests guarding the stream 

 on either side, how he turned and whis- 

 pered, " James, are you awake? "and con- 

 tinued, " I cannot sleep ; I am too happy ; 

 I keep thinking of these glorious plans." 

 The plans contemplated following the Ama- 

 zon to its head-waters, and peneti'ating the 

 Andes in Peru. And yet, when he arrived 

 at the Peruvian frontier and learned that 

 that county had broken into revolution, 

 that his letters to officials would be useless, 

 and that that part of the project must be 

 given up, although he was indeed bitterly 

 chagrined and excited for part of an hour, 

 when the hour had passed over it seemed 

 as if he had quite forgotten the disappoint- 

 ment, so enthusiastically was he occupied 

 already with the new scheme substituted 

 by his active mind. 



Agassiz's influence on methods of teach- 

 ing in our community was prompt and de- 

 cisive — all the more so that it struck 



