No. 375.] AGASSIZ AT PENIKESE. 193 
WHITMAN, C. O., Teacher in English High School, Boston, Mass. (Head 
Professor of Biology, University of Chicago, IIl.). 
WHITNEY, SOLON, Teacher in Cambridge High School, Watertown, Mass. 
It is significant that at least six of those who attended the 
first summer school of natural history in America have been 
more or less directly concerned in the development of its im- 
proved successors in various parts of the country. 
Of the forty-four persons on the above list, sixteen — more 
than one-third — were women. Coeducation— then hotly de- 
bated and regarded in some quarters as a bugbear — had not, 
apparently, with Agassiz even the dignity of existence as a 
problem. In his opening address the matter was disposed of 
in the following words : 
As soon as the number of students was limited, we determined 
a question of no small moment, — whether ladies should be admitted. 
In my mind I had no hesitation from the start. There were those 
about us whose opinion I had to care for but did not know, so I 
_ thought the best way was not to ask it, but to decide for myself. 
His decision was certainly consistent. The title of his 
thesis at graduation in 1830 was “ Femina humana mari 
superior.’ 1 For several years he had lectured almost daily 
in a school for girls conducted by his wife; and upon her 
intellectual companionship and coöperation he had become so 
dependent that he once declared to the writer with signs of 
profound emotion, ‘ Without her I could not exist.” Nor was 
his confidence in the desire and capacity of those women mis- 
placed. With hardly an exception, their assiduity was notable, 
and they, rather than the men, required warning against over- 
work during what-should have been their time of rest or 
recreation. 
The age and position of most of the students and the 
circumstances under which they were placed precluded any 
expectation of disorder. The single untoward incident is 
mentioned as illustrating two of Agassiz’s characteristics, vis., 
his hopeful willingness to afford individuals the benefit of any 
1 So stated in Guyot’s Memoir of Louis Agassiz, p. 17. Read before the Na- 
tional Academy of Sciences, 1877 and 1878. Princeton, 1883. 49 pp 
