LOUIS AGASSIZ. 201 



full of^original suggestions^ and proposing some theories of local crea- 

 tions, which startled the scieutific world, and whose discussion has hardly 

 yet subsided. Then came his greater work on "Fossil Fishes." He 

 devoted seven years to the investigation of the subject before he com- 

 menced publishing. He visited all the great collections in Eurox)e and 

 England, accompanied by a skillfid artist to malie his drawings. More 

 than eighty museums, pubhc and private, \Yere visited by him, and from 

 which he was permitted to retain some of the most rare and precious 

 specimens for many years that he might make his work as perfect as 

 possilde by repeated and rigid comparisons. The last sheets of this 

 work came before the public in 1844, having been in the press ten years, 

 and containing the results of seventeen years' study, such study as few but 

 Agassiz understood and accomi)lished. This work was in five large 

 volumes, with a folio atlas, containing four hundred plates. One thou- 

 sand species are figured in their natural size with the colors of their beds, 

 and seven hundred sjjecies more are partially represented and described. 

 New types of fishes were discovered, and a new classification was ren- 

 dered necessary by the publication of this work. And hardly less im- 

 portant was its influence upon geology than upon ichthyology. The 

 relative ages of difierent formations were more accurately determined by 

 these fossils. The relations of the other classes of vertebrates were also 

 discovered, and some very important general conclusions were drawn 

 from these seventeen years' study of paleontology and collateral inves- 

 tigations. The indications of purpose, of designed arrangement every- 

 where discovered, not onlj^ in the teeth of the fossil shark but also in the 

 arm of a polyp, so impressed his mind that he affirmed the ''existence 

 of a superior intelligence to have been established by rigid demonstration 

 and on a truly scientific hasisP "Have we not," he exclaims at the close 

 of his work, after summing up its great facts, "have we not here proof of 

 the existence of a mind as iDowerful as prolific ? the acts of an intelligence 

 as sublime as provident? the marks of goodness as infinite as wise"? 

 The most paJ^jaNe demonstration of the existence of a personal God., Author 

 of all things, Buler of the universe, and Dispenser of all goi,d f This, at 

 least, is what I read in the works of creation." The great paleontologist 

 was led from ISTatui'e up to Nature's God. 



While Agassiz was preparing this great work for the press, a labor 

 one would suppose equal to any student's strength, and sufficient to 

 gratify any student's ambition, he made most elaborate original investi- 

 gations, and published monographs, upon " Fossil and Li^dug Radiates 

 and Mollusks," accompanied with full descrij)tions of their habits and 

 relations. During the same period, as if his strength was as inex- 

 haustible as the fields of science which he cultivated, he i)ublished his 

 " Zoological Nomenclature," {Nomenclator Zoologicus,) containing the 

 names of all the genera in the animal kingdoin, and the names of the 

 students who first proposed them, and the time when they were given. 

 And to this he added another and very important work, the " Library 



