^T. 36.] TO JOHN TORREY. 345 



You have not told me about Chapman's queer plant 

 yet! . . . 



Unless Nuttall has arrived, v^hich I do not hear of, 

 it is too late for him till next fall ; for his object w^as 

 to secure three months' absence out of the present 

 year, and three out of next.^ 



January 24, 1847. 



Agassiz has finished his lectures with great eclat — 

 most admirable course — and on Thursday evening 

 last he volunteered an additional one in French, which 

 was fine. 



I gave you the explanation you asked for in my 

 last letter, which I still hope you will find. What I 

 then said about the excellent tone of his lectures gen- 

 erally was fully sustained to the last ; they have been 

 good lectures on natural theology. The whole spirit 

 was vastly above that of any geological course I ever 

 heard, his refutation of Lamarckian or " Vestiges " 

 views most pointed and repeated. The whole course 

 was planned on a very high ground, and his references 

 to the Creator were so natural and unconstrained as to 

 show that they were never brought in for effect. 



The points that I. A. Smith has got hold of were a 

 few words at the close of his lecture on the geographi- 

 cal distribution of animals, in which he applied the 

 views he maintains (which are those of Schouw still 

 further extended) to man. 



He thinks that animals and plants were originally 

 created in numbers, occupying considerable area, per- 

 haps almost as large as they now occupy. I should 



1 A relatiTe left Nuttall a comfortable little estate and property on 

 condition that he should not be away from it more than three months 

 in the year. He managed to come to America again by taking the 

 three last months of one year and the three first of the next. 



