148 THE AMERICAN NATURALIST. (VOL; XXXII. 
his first introduction into zoology and paleontology, fields which 
he was later to make peculiarly his own. For still greater 
facilities he and his friends soon turned to the newly established 
University of Munich, where in 1830 he received the degree 
of Doctor of Medicine. 
During these undergraduate days he paid more attention to 
zoology than to the strictly medical studies, and his room 
became a great resort for others having similar tastes. Here 
each member had his special subject and delivered lectures 
upon it to the others, so that the term, “the little academy,” 
applied to these meetings contained as much truth as jest. 
The life which Agassiz lived here has a lesson for our students. 
Making due allowance for the differences in prices, the money 
which his father and friends could give him for his education 
would fall far below that spent by our students to-day, and yet 
out of this pittance Agassiz not only supported himself and 
aided friends, but he employed an artist to draw the fishes for 
proposed works,—the fishes of central Europe and those col- 
lected by Martius and Spix in Brazil. 
Here, too, he began his investigations upon the fossil fishes, 
and soon, by borrowing, he had at his command an enormous 
collection of these forms. The task was enough to appall 
most persons. The fossils were in all conditions of preserva- 
tion, and in those days little was known of the osteology of the 
recent forms. Yet order was brought out of chaos, and these 
early studies were the foundation of all subsequent work in 
this line. It matters little if we can no longer use the scales 
as a character for the separation of the major groups of the 
fish-like forms; the Researches on Fossil Fishes shows great 
anatomical insight and powers of generalization. 
These studies of fishes led him to Paris, then the great centre 
of all scientific work, and here he formed the acquaintance 
of Cuvier and Humboldt, and Cuvier opened the collections 
of fossil fishes in the museum to the young student. While 
in Paris he received the appointment as Professor of Natural 
Science at the Academy of Neuchatel. When he began his 
labors there he was without facilities for his work ; collections 
and apparatus, aside from his own private property, were lack- 
