AGASSIZ AT PENIKESE? 
BURT G. WILDER. 
ELSEWHERE are set forth the characteristics and the achieve- 
ments of Louis Agassiz as investigator and director of re- 
search, as accumulator of specimens and builder of museums, 
as writer and public lecturer. Whatever has been said of him 
also as inspirer of lofty effort and personal sacrifice, as teacher, 
and educational pioneer, surely the precious qualities implied 
in these terms were never more conspicuous or more effective 
than during the last year of his life in the establishment of 
the Anderson Summer School of Natural History at Penikese 
Island. 
On the 14th of December, twelve months to a day before 
his death, was issued a circular embodying a “ Programme of a 
Course of Instruction in Natural History, to be delivered by 
the Seaside, in Nantucket, during the Summer Months, chiefly 
designed for Teachers who propose to introduce the Study into 
their Schools and for Students preparing to become Teachers. 
The following extract from a later circular clearly indicates 
the founder’s views as to the nature of the enterprise: 
1 This article is based upon the writer’s diary and recollections, and upon his 
article, “The Anderson School of Natural History,” in the ation for Sept. 11, 
1873, pp. 174,175. The doings of the first two days were described by a staff 
correspondent in the Mew York Tribune for July 9 and 10, 1873. In the Po- 
ular Science Monthly, vol. xl, pp. 721-729, April, 1892, under the title “ Agassiz at 
Penikese,” are recorded the i impressions of the entire session upon a pupil, David 
S. Jordan. Zhe Organization and Progress of the Anderson School of Natural 
History at Penikese Island (30 pp. and 5 ppl., Cambridge, 1874) is the “ Report 
of the Trustees,” of whom one was Alexander Agassiz, the professor’s son; as 
a clear and accurate record of the essential facts it could not be surpassed. In 
Louis Agassiz, His Life and Letters (2 vols., Boston, 1885) Mrs. Agassiz has de- 
voted the larger portion of the last chapter to what another erap has char- 
acterized as “ the most extraordinary episode in Agassiz’s life.” Upon the present 
occasion, under the necessary limitations of space, rather than a mere outline of 
the whole, the writer has endeavored to pease a few incidents that seem to him 
most characteristic of the occasion and of the m 
