152 THE AMERICAN NATURALIST. [VoL. XXXII. 
money to build according to his desires was to be obtained was 
for a long time a serious problem. 
In 1858 Mr. Francis C. Gray left in the hands of trustees a 
bequest of $50,000 to establish a museum of comparative 
` zoology. This fund was passed over into the control of 
Harvard College; friends raised by subscription over $70,000, 
while Agassiz labored with the Massachusetts legislature to 
such good effect that the Commonwealth appropriated $100,000 
to properly house the collections. To the Museum of Com- 
parative Zoology thus established — the Agassiz Museum as it 
is familiarly known in Cambridge to this time — Agassiz gave 
his private collections which had cost him in pecuniary outlay 
about $10,000. 
The building then planned was to form three sides of a hol- 
low square, the front to be 364 feet long and 64 feet wide, 
the two wings to be 205 feet long and as wide as the front. 
The part at first erected was but about two-fifths of one of the 
wings, and this portion, sufficient for all immediate needs, was 
formerly opened as a museum in November, 1860. To-day the. 
whole of one wing is completed, about four-fifths of the front 
is occupied, while two-fifths of the other wing is built. There 
has been, however, a change in the plans in this respect. The 
museum is not purely zoological in character, but it contains 
as well the laboratories and collections of geology, mineralogy, 
and a large part of the botanical laboratories and collections 
(except the phanerogamic herbarium, kept at the Botanic Gar- 
den); while the Peabody Museum of American Archzology and 
Ethnology occupies the incomplete wing. Corresponding to this 
change, the whole structure is now known as the University 
Museums, the Museum of Comparative Zoology occupying the. 
basement and five floors of one of the wings and a part of the 
front, with a total floor area of nearly three acres. 
During his American life Agassiz made several extended 
scientific trips. In 1851 he went to Florida under the auspices 
of the United States Coast Survey; in 1865—66 he spent, with 
a party of friends, assistants, and pupils, ten months in Brazil, 
collecting chiefly in the valleys of the Amazon and Rio Negro, 
bringing back with him enormous collections to add to those 
