LETTERS FROM BRAZIL 93 
opment. The apprehension that she expresses proved need- 
less, for during the absence of Agassiz the Legislature of 
Massachusetts made a generous appropriation which was 
doubled by private subscriptions, so that accommodations 
were provided for the valuable collections that he was 
making in Brazil. 
The book to which Mrs. Agassiz refers in this letter is 
Seaside Studies in Natural History, which she wrote in col- 
laboration with Alexander Agassiz, who contributed the 
drawings and many of the investigations, while Mrs. 
Agassiz wrote the text with the assistance of his notes and 
explanations. It supplies a popular scientific treatment of 
the Marine Animals of Massachusetts Bay and was pub- 
lished in the hope that it would meet a want often ex- 
pressed for such a seaside manual. 
TO MISS SARAH G. CARY 
Manaos, January 8, 1866 
Prop e think that Agassiz has been working too hard 
on the Amazons, and so perhaps he has; but work is 
his life, and I am convinced that the journey would 
not have done him half the good it has, if he had not 
had the means of working as he has done. To have 
seen the means of making such a wonderful collection 
all about him and not to have been able to do it would 
have been to him a suffering worse than that of Tan- 
talus of old — it would have been to see the promised 
land and not to enter it. I anticipate,a coming cloud. 
Alex is alarmed at the size of the collections which 
he says will be too expensive to take care of, and the 
Amazons collections which he did not yet know about 
