608 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



solute perfection of the enduring forms. Natural selection this hope 

 has been called, because the hand of Nature bestows the warrant of 

 nobility. But man is himself only a part of that great, that bountiful, 

 that all-generous Nature, and it is wrong to speak of the selections he 

 has made among the flowers which embower his dwelling, and the 

 half-mute companions of his home, as artificial. In making these he 

 is but executing the commands of Nature, as the most skilled work- 

 man in her earthly palace of labor, and the approximations to perfec- 

 tion which she initiates by the intellectual and moral lever of his mind 

 distance all others known to us. 



The chemistry of to-day is, in part a science searching for forms 

 of truth ; in part an art pursuing the objects of the useful. The 

 scientific chemist seeks and discovers realities of fact ; the technical 

 chemist produces realities of matter ; neither of them endeavors to give 

 existence to material ideals. But though man may thus unconsciously 

 serve the inscrutable power through which all is that is, and all is 

 what it is, yet of nobler mood is he who, feeling his heart swell in 

 sympathy with her purpose — the creation of ultimate universal per- 

 fection — persists in constant faith to work her ends. Of such noble 

 mood, and of such conscious purpose, must be the future alchemist. 

 His work — the reformation of the crude earth, and air, and waters, 

 that surround us, in the image of his chemical ideals, the production 

 of untold varieties of the philosopher's stone — is not to be accomplished 

 in a lifetime, or a century, but demands the continued labor of infinite 

 generations. We shall never behold it, but — 



" On the day when, drawn on paths of duty, 

 The last worlds — eternity-begun — 

 Rest, embraced in ever-glorious beauty, 

 On the heart of the All-Central Sun "— 



shall most surely be witnessed its completion ! 



-+*+- 



L 



PROFESSOR LOUIS AGASSIZ. 



By EICHAKD BLISS, Jr., 



OF THE CAMBRIDGE MUSEUM OF COMPARATIVE ZOOLOGY. 



OUIS JEAN RODOLPHE AGASSIZ, whose death occurred the 

 14th of last December, was born May 28, 1807, in Mottier, Switz- 

 erland. From his earliest childhood he evinced a remarkable fond- 

 ness for the study of natural science, and before he had left school be- 

 gan to collect and study into the habits of fishes. Having finished his 

 course at the Gymnasium of Bienne, he chose for his profession that 

 of medicine, and commenced to study at the Academy of Zurich. 

 Thence he went to Heidelberg, where he made a special study of 



