ADDRESSES. 



ADDRESS OF PROFESSOR J. S. NEWBERRY OF COLUMBIA COLLEGE. 



Mr. President, and Ladies and Gentlemen : 



It is evident, that no one, however gifted, could satisfactorily 

 perform the duty which has been assigned to me on this occasion, 

 namely, in ten minutes' time to give an exposition of the life and 

 labors of one of the most individual and interesting of men, and 

 one of the ablest, most distinguished and most useful of scientists. 

 But it was my good fortune to enjoy for nearly thirty years the 

 friendship of Agassiz ; and I should be ungrateful to him and un- 

 true to my own feelings, if, when opportunity offered, I failed to 

 express, though in broken phrases, my admiration and gratitude. 



My special craze, as some of you know, is geology, and among 

 the different departments of this science, perhaps the subjects 

 which have interested me most have been fossil fishes, and the Ice 

 Period, — that most mysterious and dramatic chapter in our geo- 

 logical history. Agassiz was best known as a zoologist, but he 

 was also an eminent geologist ; his interest in science was in fact 

 universal, and his range of knowledge phenomenal. His most 

 important published work was his li Recherches sur les Poissons 

 Fossiles, in which he gave figures and descriptions of all the fossil 

 fishes known up to the time of its completion, and by this and his 

 work on the Fossil Fishes of the Old Red Sandstone, he may be 

 said to have created the science of fossil ichthyology, This was 

 a subject in which he felt the keenest interest up to the day of his 

 death ; and when, a young man, I brought to him some of the 

 remarkable fossil fishes I had found in Ohio, he received me with 

 more than cordiality, and from that time all the rich material he 

 was accumulating in the Museum of Comparative Zoology, and 

 all the stores of his vast knowledge, were freely offered and often 

 used in the prosecution of my studies. 



Although Agassiz's most voluminous works are those on fossil 

 fishes, and these gave him world-wide celebrity among scientists, 

 his studies of the glaciers and the surprising results of those studies 

 have contributed more to his popular fame. 



