I 56 THE AMERICAN NATURALIST. [VoL. XXXII. 
In his more strictly scientific publications Agassiz employed 
the same sumptuous mechanical dress for his thoughts here as 
he did in Europe, and his Contributions to the Natural History 
of the United States is, even at this day, but rarely surpassed 
in beauty of presswork and quality of illustration. This work 
was to have been issued in ten quarto volumes, and the sub- 
scription list obtained (over 2500) before the first volume was 
issued is an index of the popular esteem in which the professor 
was held. Only four volumes were published and then the 
series stopped. Doubtless many of the subscribers expected 
gaily colored plates of birds and fishes and shells, such as were 
to be found in the then recently issued Natural History of the 
State of New York, and possibly some of them expected pop- 
ular disquisitions on animals and plants something after the 
same style as was later furnished by the garrulous Rev. J. G. 
Wood. They received nothing of the sort. These four vol- 
umes were filled with an elaborate essay on the principles of 
zoological classification, a minute account of the development 
of the turtle, and details of the anatomy and histology of the 
Coelenterata. The result was that the subscribers fell off. 
Agassiz, too, had so much other work to do that the series was 
never completed. 
These same volumes, however, possessed great scientific 
value, and the Essay on Classification should be read by all, for 
nowhere will one find a clearer statement of the teleological 
argument, nowhere a better survey of the various systems of 
classification proposed at different times by the older masters. 
The work on the turtles is referred to elsewhere in this journal, 
but the studies upon the ccelenterates must not be ignored. 
This work marked a new departure in Agassiz’s work. In 
Europe, removed as he was from the sea, he had no chance to 
study these forms, but at East Boston, at Charleston, and at 
his summer residence at Nahant this new world was opened 
up to him. So in the two volumes of the Contributions which 
deal with the ccelenterates we have a most valuable contribution 
to our knowledge of these forms. Here we find the demon- 
stration that the millipores belong to the Hydrozoa rather than 
to the Scyphozoa. Here we find accounts of the life histories 
