AGASSIZ ON RECENT FISHES. 
DAVID STARR JORDAN. 
Axsout 1827, when Louis Agassiz was some twenty years of 
age, a student in the University of Munich, Spix and Martius 
returned from their travels in Brazil, bringing with them a large 
collection of fishes. 
Agassiz was then a favored student of Dr. Déllinger, resident 
in his house, where in his modest apartments he maintained his 
“little academy,” “ sleeping-room, fencing-room, museum, and 
laboratory all in one,” and here he kept the collection of fish 
skeletons which the anatomist Meckel once came all the way 
to Munich to see. He had already studied the structure and 
breeding habits of the fishes of Lake Neuchatel, and his 
reputation was established as a man that knows fishes. 
The collection of Spix and Martius was placed in Agassiz’s 
hands, to be treated according to the best methods of systematic 
zoology. This the young man did to the best of his ability, tak- 
ing the classic writings of Bloch and Lacépéde as his model, 
and doing with his material quite as well as these fathers of 
ichthyology:could have done. 
The Piscium Brasiliensium, published in 1829, made a large, 
thick quarto, on heavy paper, with detailed descriptions and 
colored full-page illustrations of each species. The engravings 
were poor and costly, after the fashion of the time, and the 
descriptions elaborate, but uncritical, being formed after bad | 
models before good models existed. — 
Criticism and comparison in zoology was first introduced by 
Cuvier, and most of Cuvier’s descriptive work was in 1827 still 
in the future, though numerous references in the text to letters 
from Cuvier show that Agassiz had tried to make the best use 
he could of the help of his master. 
A number of papers on the fresh-water fishes of Switzerland 
and neighboring regions were published in following years, — 
