3° 



SCIENCE-GOSSIP. 



LOUIS AGASSIZ. 



T N giving two portraits of different periods of the 

 ■*■ life of Jean Louis Rudolphe Agassiz, we are 

 reminded of how little is the work and influence of 

 that great thinker understood by the rising genera- 

 tion of biological workers in this country. Born 

 28th May, 1S07, in the village of Motier, by the 

 shores of Lake 

 Morat, in 

 Switzerland, 

 he died on the 

 14th Decem- 

 ber, 1873, in 

 the United 

 States of 

 America, hav- 

 ing become a 

 naturalised 

 subject of the 

 Union. Until 

 quite the lat- 

 ter part of his 

 life his career 

 was one of 

 incessant 

 work and 

 struggle with 

 necessity ; for, 

 devoting his 

 best energies 

 to indepen- 

 dent research, 

 he often neg- 

 lected to earn more than abso- 

 lute necessity demanded. Yet 

 he died full of honour, and 

 though he left no riches, he 

 bequeathed to posterity a 

 wealth of scientific information, 

 only realized by those who 

 knew him, or have had occa- 

 sion to search through his 

 published writings. 



The son of a clergyman who 

 had practical control of the 

 public education of his dis- 

 trict, Louis Agassiz had every 

 advantage of training available 

 to his father, and he made 

 such wise use of it that after 

 his arrival in America, in 1846, he gave an 

 impetus to scientific investigation which led to 

 its present powerful hold upon the American people. 

 In that country he is considered to have been 

 the greatest theistic philosopher of the scientific 

 world. 



Above all things, Louis Agassiz was a field 

 naturalist, one who studied nature in her best 

 moods. Never was he more successful as a teacher 

 than when wandering in the open air surrounded 

 by subjects which formed texts for his discourses. 

 Thus it was that many men, now holding posts of 

 honour in the scientific world, both in 

 Europe and in America, gained from 

 him the early training in the craft in 

 which they have risen to be ornaments. 

 So fully recognised became his system 

 of outdoor study, that there is hardly 

 a town of consequence in the United 

 States which does not possess its branch 

 of the Agassiz Association. The feeling 

 is consequently growing in America, 

 that every educated person is still 

 incompletely educated unless possessing 

 a practical knowledge of the common 

 objects that surround us. 



As a scientific traveller and investi- 

 gator of many regions, Agassiz ranks 

 with Hum- 

 boldt, for he 

 was equally 

 at home when 

 discussing the 

 glaciers of 

 Switzerland, 

 the features 

 of Lake Su- 

 perior, or the 

 animals of 

 the Amazons. 

 We are in- 

 debted to Mr. 

 C. H.Watson 

 for kindly 

 drawing for us 

 the oval por- 

 trait of Louis 

 Agassiz and 

 to Messrs. G. 

 P. Putnam's 

 Sons, of New 

 York, for per- 

 mission to re- 

 produce the 

 etching of 

 Agassiz at the age of nineteen. This latter 

 portrait is reduced from a life of Louis Agassiz, by 

 Dr. Chas. F. Holder, published by the Putnams 

 last year. At the end of that book there is a list of 

 the writings of Louis Agassiz which occupies nearly 

 three dozen closely-printed pages. 



Louis Agassiz. 



