220 



separated. As my arrangement now stands, it differs as much as can 

 be from yours; but I should feel very happy if it meets your appro- 

 bation when published, and if you are then as fully satisfied as you 

 seem now to be, that there is no difference between the final result of 

 your observations and mine. 



As I am anxious that nobody should draw incorrect inferences 

 from your commimication to the Philosophical Society, I beg you will 

 read this letter to that learned society, and if you have sent abroad 

 separate copies of your notice, do me the favour to have as many 

 copies of my letter struck off, and direct it also to your friends. 



I trust this explanation will satisfy you that 1 am the last man 

 wiUing to appropriate to himself the observations of others, and I re- 

 main, as before, 



Your sincere friend, 



L. AGASSIZ. 

 I. Lea, Esq., Philadelphia. 



Philadelphia, July 29, 1851. 

 My Dear Sir, — I yesterday received your letter of 26th, and beg 

 to assure you that I will road it to the Philosophical Society, as you 

 request. Our next meeting takes place on the 15th of August, and if 

 I am in town then, I shall not fail to read it. Will you permit me to 

 say that I do not think you have entirely understood my communica- 

 tion to the Society? My object was simply to reclaim some dis- 

 coveries made long since by me, which, in the report of the Boston 

 Natural History Society, are given as the result of investigations re- 

 cently made by you. I attributed this, of course, to inadvertence on 

 your part, but it was nevertheless due to myself to claim what I con- 

 sider to be the result of my own labours. What you say in your 

 letter, regarding your own investigations and your intention to estab- 

 lish a new anatomical system of classification, different from that of 

 my system, founded on the calcareous envelope of the animal, meets 

 my hearty concurrence. When I understood, some time since, that 

 you were making examinations for that purpose, I was rejoiced to 

 find that you, who were so skilful and experienced in every branch 

 of comparative anatomy, were giving your analytical powers to a 

 group in natural history which had delighted me for so many years; 

 but to which, unhappily, I could not give the time requisite to addi- 

 tional labour of minute dissection. In supposing that I could have 

 any possible objection to your working in the same field, or your 

 forming a different and more natural system, founded on the soft 



