Obituary — Professor Agassiz. 47 



deep as that of the Wombats. This part of the jaw has never been 

 seen before, and will probably cause Prof. Owen to modify some- 

 what his restoration of Diprotodon. Gerakd Kkefft. 



Australian Museum, Sydney, Sep. 28, 1873. 



OBiTTr.i^s,:2". 



PEOFESSOR AGASSIZ. 



By the death of Prof. Agassiz, Science has lost one of her most 

 distinguished students. Louis Jean Rodolphe Agassiz was born on 

 May 28th, 1807, in the parish of Mottier, between the lakes of 

 Neuchatel and Morat. He received his early education at Bienne, 

 from which he went to the Academy at Lausanne, and afterwards 

 studied medicine and science at the Universities of Zurich, Heidel- 

 berg, and Munich. In 1837 he was Professor of Natural History 

 in the University of Neuchatel, but long before this he had manifested 

 that great power of investigation which speedily raised him to a high 

 position among the scientific men of his time. 



His earliest studies were directed to ichthyology, and especially to 

 the fish of his native country. His first memoir on this subject was 

 published in 1828, and in 1829 we find him describing the more 

 remarkable fish obtained by Spix and Martins in their Brazilian 

 travels. He afterwards turned his attention more particularly to 

 fossil fish, for the classification of which he proposed a new system, 

 founded on characters derived from the scales. In fossil ichthyology 

 Agassiz speedily became the chief authority, and after publishing 

 numerous memoirs treating of separate branches of this difficult 

 subject, all of the highest value, he brought his labours in this 

 department to their culmination by the publication of his magnificent 

 " Recherches sur les Poissons fossiles," which apj)eared at Neuchatel 

 between the years 1833 and 1844 in five large quarto volumes, illus- 

 trated by the same number of volumes of beautifully prepared plates 

 in folio. This work, which is admirably executed in all respects, is 

 undoubtedly Agassiz's grandest contribution to scientific literature; 

 it has never been, and probably never will be, surpassed. In aid of 

 its publication the Geological Society voted the author the proceeds 

 of the Wollaston Donation Fund in 1833, and in recognition of the 

 valuable services rendered by him to this particular department of 

 science, the same Society, in 1836, presented him with the Wollaston 

 medal. Whilst this work was in progress, Agassiz engaged in the 

 study of certain groups of fossils, especiallj'- those belonging to the 

 class Echinodermata (starfishes and sea-urchins), upon which he 

 published many memoirs, some of them prepared in conjunction 

 with M. T. Desor. His " Nomenclator Zoologicus," commenced in 

 1842, but not completed until 1848, is a woi-k of enormous labour, 

 containing a nearly complete classified list of all names emploj'ed in 

 zoology up to the date of its preparation for genera and groups of 

 higher systematic value, with references to the authors who invented 

 them and the works in which they were first used. A task of almost 



