204 LOUIS AGASSIZ, 



appointed in this professor of geology and zoology. He now determined 

 to make this country his home, and sent for a discharge from his commis- 

 sion given by the King of Prussia. It was granted liim in the assur- 

 ance " tha^t wherever he took up his abode, his time would be employed 

 to the best advantage of science." 



At this time there was no collection of specimens of zoology in America 

 which would compare for a moment with the museums of the Old World ; 

 and it uow became with Agassiz an absorbing passion of his life to found 

 one which should rival the richest that the ambition and wealth of emper- 

 ors and empires had established. His enthusiasm sent collectors to the 

 steaming bayous of the Gulf, the frozen coast of Labrador, and around the 

 unexplored shores of the northern lakes. He inspired with one purpose 

 young and old, on land and on sea. The Pacihc as well as the Atlantic 

 coast was his tributary. Every shii3 brought him some contribution. 

 Every train paid tribute to his accumulating riches. Traveling from 

 city to city, and charming as well as instructing by his lectures, he en- 

 listed young and old in his great enterprise till it seemed as if the whole 

 population of the country were his agents or assistants. Stored in barns, 

 in warehouses, in cellars, and in attics, Cambridge was full of jiackages 

 fur the museum. The hour was fully come. He now turned his back 

 more promptly and firmly against all temptations to abandon his great 

 })urpose. To an offer to give his knowledge and genius to the ad- 

 vantage of a great pecuniary undertaking which would have poured a 

 fortune into his lap, he simply replied, "Z have no time to malce moneyP 

 When I^apoleon, at the recommendation of the academy, invited him to 

 the highest scientific position in France, and intimated, not obscurely, 

 that as a citizen of France it was hardly right or honorable for him to 

 give his transcendent talent and world-wide fame to a new and un- 

 scientific country, and not to add to the renown of the institutions of the 

 land of his ancestors enriched b}^ imperial bounties and honors, he re- 

 plied in substance that he was not a citizen of France, and that his 

 family and ancestors owed nothing to France but exile and poverty j 

 that he prized more highly the spontaneous gratitude and gifts of a free 

 people than the })atronage of emperors and the formal regard of nobles. 



His great work, " Contributions to the E'atural History of the United 

 States," had been commenced ; the school which his wife had opened in 

 his house for young ladies, to aid in supjiorting his family, was in full 

 success and received daily lectures from him ; he was overwhelmed, not 

 only with corres{)ondence on scientific subjects from all x)arts of the 

 world, but with specimens, so that the neighborhood of his work-room 

 often appeared like the storehouse of an importer. The college had 

 already pin-chased his earlier collections to enable him to collect more. 

 After twelve years of indefatigable labor, the mass of materials had 

 become simply enormous; and there was no place to store them in 

 security, much less any place where they could be either exhibited 

 or studied. What coidd be done % The will of Francis 0. Gray, of- 



