42 ALEXANDER AGASSIZ 



TO A. MILNE EDWARDS 1 



Nahant, July 27, 1865. 



Cher Monsieur : 2 — 



I have received your kind letter of July 6 and also 

 the diploma of the Philomatique Society ; kindly thank 

 the members of the society for the honor they have done 

 me in making me one of them. I also thank you for 

 your kind appreciation of my memoir on Echinoderms. 

 I hope some day to pay a visit to the old world and 

 make the acquaintance of all those that I know only by 

 correspondence. 



Before the departure of the steamer from New York, 

 one of the birds, the Lophodytes cucullatus, was already 

 among the dead. The heat in June has been intense 

 and I much fear that the last invoice will not amount 

 to much. Among the animals which we intended for 

 you which have been sent us since, the mortality has 

 been very great, and they simply suffocated with the 

 heat. I lost in this way a young Caribou, two young 

 Lynx — several different kinds of our indigenous birds, 

 but I hope that by the steamer of the 28th of next 

 month I shall be able to send you something. A Lutra 

 Canadensis and a Mustek pen nan ti died on their way 

 from Maine, as well as some small mammals. I pass my 

 vacation at the sea-shore, and as soon as I get back to 

 Cambridge I will see if I can send you an invoice of 

 Crustacea from the West Coast of America. Stimpson, 

 who used to have charge of our Crustacea, is at present 

 in Chicago, where he has replaced a young man who is 



1 Of the Jardin des Plantes, Paris ; on the death of his father he be- 

 came its director. 



2 Agassiz's letters to his Paris correspondents are written in French, 

 those to his German colleagues were usually in English. 



