No. 375.] PAHILOSOPHICAL VIEWS OF AGASSIZ. 163 
phases of development of all living-animals correspond to the 
order of succession of their extinct representatives in past 
geological times. As far as this goes, the oldest representatives 
of every class may then be considered as embryonic types of 
their respective orders or families among the living.” 
Agassiz’s prophetic types are those which “combine in their 
structure peculiarities which at later periods are only observed 
separately in different distinct types.” As examples he mentions 
the ganoids, fishes, pterodactyles, and the ichthyosaurs. He, 
however, regarded ganoids as more distinctively synthetic than 
prophetic types. Now we refer the origin of bony fishes, of 
Amphibia, and of reptiles to the ganoids. Agassiz fully appre- 
ciated the more salient facts on which this generalization rests, 
and we may think it strange that it did not occur to him that 
the connection could only be explained by supposing that it 
was a genetic one. 
In this respect Agassiz did not rise above the limitations of 
his time and of his own nature, but the facts he worked out, or 
which his students and collaborators discovered, were freely 
given to his students; and in this respect if he did not grasp, 
or was unwilling to accept, the conclusions of Lamarck and of 
Darwin, he paved the way for the adoption by his students of 
evolutional views. 
How well does the writer remember a conversation he once 
held with Agassiz at Penikese, in the summer of 1873. We had 
given a lecture to our class on Limulus, the horseshoe crab, its 
structure and mode of development, at the close advocating 
without reserve the view that Limulus does not stand alone, but 
that it is genetically related to other jointed animals, and that 
there are different lines of development of life-forms. At the 
close of the hour, and after the class had scattered to the work 
tables, Agassiz, who had been present, strode up and down the 
room in ‘a state of evident, though repressed, excitement, and 
then remarked to us with one of his most genial smiles on his 
lips: “I should have been a great fellow for evolution if it had 
not been for the breaks in the paleontological record.” We 
replied: “But, Professor, see what great gaps in the higher 
vertebrates have been filled by the recent discoveries of birds 
