200 LOUIS AGASSIZ. 



tMtlier in his twentieth year ; for his motto thus early in life seems to 

 have been, "Of instruction, the best 5 of investigation, perfection." There 

 were Oken and Martins and Schelling and Dollinger, each of whom 

 was an original investigator and discoverer, founder even of some 

 branches of science. He was received to the intimacy of these eminent 

 luen — a vast advantage, when there is manhood behind acquisitions, and 

 sense behind genius ; otherwise, the sorest misfortune that can befall a 

 student. There young Agassiz reveled in all the luxuries of original 

 investigations for four years. His fellow-students were delighted with 

 the brilliancy of his discussions, and he was the inspiring genius of a 

 select society of young men who were engaged in scientific studies, 

 which embodied so much talent and made such discoveries that it was 

 called the Little Academy, and attracted the presence and participation 

 of the professors. During these four years he published a few special 

 papers. But he at once placed himself in the foremost rank of natural- 

 ists by his discussion and classification of the fishes of Brazil, to which 

 work he was assigned by his teacher Martins. It w^as published in 

 Latin in folio. This was his first work, his first contribution to natural 

 science. 



Agassiz was now twenty-four years of age. His thirst for the study of 

 natural science had become so strong that he was diverted from the pro- 

 fession of medicine which his parents wished him to adopt, and became 

 an interpreter of nature. He lost thereby the paternal allowance, but 

 gained mental independence. He took his doctorate of philosophy at 

 Erlangen with distinction, after an unusually severe examination. He 

 obtained his degree of doctor of medicine in the same year at Munich, 

 and maintained in his thesis the superiority of woman to man. 



Agassiz was now a graduate with high honors, and with the world 

 before him as an inheritance — the world full of richest fields to be 

 explored. For twenty-two years, till his coming to America in 1846, he 

 gave himself with most unbounded enthusiasm and herculean labor to 

 original investigations 5 spending weeks over his microscope in observing 

 the changes in the processes of the growth of animal life from the germ to 

 the mature form ; following the courses of rivers and visiting the different 

 basins of Europe to determine the distribution of its fishes ; traversing 

 the lake-shores and mountains of Switzerland to learn the causes of the 

 erosion of the rocks and the transportation of the bowlders; visiting 

 England and Scotland to compare the insular with the continental phe- 

 nomena; pitching his tent, season after season, upon the Alpine glaciers 

 that he might study accurately their movements and force ; making the 

 acquaintance of the princes of science and taken joyfully into their inti- 

 macy — Humboldt, Cuvier, Baer, Owen, Murchison ; and, calling around 

 him the most accomplished artists, in his own study, under his own eye, 

 he caused to be drawn from nature and printed an outline of the results 

 of all these travels, observations, and acquisitions. First came his great 

 Awrk on the "JSTatural History of the Fresh- Water Fishes of Europe," 



