CHAPTER VII 
PENIKESE ISLAND — THE DEATH OF AGASSIZ 
1872-1873 
HEN Agassiz returned to Cambridge in October, 
1872, he at once became involved in a project long 
dear to his heart and matured by friends in his absence. 
This was a plan for establishing a summer school of natural 
history on the Massachusetts coast. When the Legislature 
of Massachusetts made its annual visit to the Museum in 
the following March, Agassiz presented a special plea for an 
appropriation for the endowment of the projected school. 
“‘Never did he plead more eloquently for the cause of edu- 
cation,” Mrs. Agassiz writes. “His gift as a speaker cannot 
easily be described. It was born of conviction and was as 
simple as it was impassioned.” It should be said in passing 
that these words of Mrs. Agassiz have an additional 
interest if read in connection with the scene in the State 
House twenty years later, described below in Chapter X, 
when she appeared before the Legislature and pleaded suc- 
cessfully for the charter of Radcliffe College with an elo- 
quence that rested as truly as that of her more impas- 
sioned husband on “conviction and simplicity.” The report 
of Agassiz’s appeal that was published in the newspapers 
aroused the interest of Mr. John Anderson of New York 
and led him to make a gift of Penikese Island in Buzzard’s 
Bay on the coast of Massachusetts as a site for the pro- 
posed school, together with an endowment fund of $50,000. 
The school was organized in April, 1873, under the name 
