ALPHEUS HYATT, 1838-1902 



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He was but nineteen years of age, yet he had now determined to 

 devote his life to science. 



In 1858 he returned to America and entered the Lawrence Scientific 

 School of Harvard University, studying engineering, but the great 

 Louis Agassiz, always seeking promising young pupils to instruct, soon 

 discovered Hyatt and drew him into his own laboratory of natural 

 history, where in an inspiring atmosphere of research and study he was 

 to form close and life-long friendships with his fellow students Clarke, 

 Morse, Packard, Putnam, Scudder, Shaler, and Verrill. With them in 

 1860 he formed the Agassiz Society which met at frequent intervals to 

 discuss zoological questions, Professor Agassiz himself attending the 

 meetings, and in the summer of 1861 with Shaler and Yerrill as com- 

 panions he went to Anticosti Island in the Gulf or St. Lawrence, collect- 

 ing fossils and marine animals. 



Louis Agassiz's lucid exposition of von Baer's law and his own addi- 

 tions thereto, and his high praise of the philosophy of Oken, produced a 

 profound effect upon young Hyatt's mind, and he is said to have learned 

 Agassiz's " Essay on Classification " by heart. One of the most graphic 

 of Louis Agassiz's lectures was upon the coiling and final uncoiling of 

 the shells of fossil ammonoids in which he compared the twisted forms 

 found in the Cretaceous just before the extinction of the group, to the 

 writhing contortions of a death struggle. Listening to this lecture, 

 Hyatt became so inspired that he determined then and there to devote 



Professor Hyatt's Desk, as it was when he left it on the day of his death. 



