410 ALEXANDER AGASSIZ 



sprain my leg and have been in bed for nearly three 

 weeks and am just out now, past week, on crutches. 

 This is going to be a slow job and will greatly inter- 

 fere with my work this summer. It will postpone the 

 Maldive Report if I don't get better quicker than of 

 late, and the doctor does not encourage me greatly. I 

 had the other day an offer from the Carnegie Institute 

 to undertake an Expedition to survey the Tropical 

 Pacific — Geology, Botany, Anthropology, Zoology, 

 including the sounding of the great Eastern Pacific 

 triangle, Acapulco, Manga Reva, Callao, with interme- 

 diate lines Manga Reva to Galapagos : Galapagos to 

 Easter Island: Easter Island to Callao, on supposition 

 I could get the Albatross, the Carnegie giving me 

 $50,000 to equip her and $100,000 a year for the Ex- 

 pedition for five years ! Had this come five years earlier 

 I would have jumped at it. But I shall be nearly sixty- 

 nine in November, 1904, which is earliest time we could 

 start, and I fear I must say no, though I feel greatly 

 tempted to do the Eastern Pacific work and leave to 

 others the rest, such as sounding and dredging round 

 each oceanic group and carrying on the shore biological 

 matters, though it would be mighty interesting to dredge 

 each group into deep oceanic water adjoining, judging 

 from the Echini I have just received from the Hawaiian 

 Islands, which cover that ground." 



Agassiz again passed the greater part of the winter 

 of 1903-04 in Paris ; he was already busy over the pre- 

 parations for his next expedition, nearly a year away ; 

 much of his time was spent in working on his Panamic 

 deep-sea Echini, which had been delayed for over ten years 

 by his coral reef work. These occupations were lightened 



