146 Recent Literature. [ February, 
As a youth, Agassiz was indefatigable as a collector, personally 
attractive, full of high impulses, and his whole mind pervaded 
with the scientific spirit. His early dreams were fully realized; 
his castles in the air were actually built—he laid their foundations 
and saw the superstructures materialized in richly illustrated vol- 
umes and in brick and iron. The vast collections—the results of 
his journeys, of his passionate appeals to State and individuals, 
the unsolicited funds which flowed in as the meed of his success 
in winning the confidence and sympathy of scientific and lay men 
—these fill the Museum of Comparative Zoology, that monument 
of a life of rare devotion to high ideals. 
_ Agassiz was a genius, Winning in manner to an unusual degree, 
full of ardor and enthusiasm, often reckless, but always success- 
ful, with a grain of fanaticism and one-sidedness in his nature, like 
a knight of old he won his proud position as one of the leading 
scientific men of his age and the most influential and popular 
teacher in the New World. 
_ Agassiz had great powers of generalization, side by side with 
those of acquisitiveness, of facts and specimens. His investiga- 
tions in embryology, palzontology, as well as systematic zoology, 
led him to form clear views as to the geological succession of 
animals, the parallelism between the development of the individ- 
ual and the group to which it belongs. His mode of looking at 
nature, the whole drift of his teachings, naturally prepared the 
mind for the reception of evolutionary ideas, and while his pupils 
and his contemporaries advanced naturally to these philosophic 
conceptions or generalizations, Agassiz,—whether owing to early 
prejudice, the lack of a judicial turn of mind and analytical 
powers, the modicum of combativeness and bigotry in his strong,’ 
intense nature, or the multiplicity of his labors and cares in the 
later years of his life, which gave him little time for sustained: 
thought,—failed to rise to the grand generalizations of modern 
biology. He will be known in the history of science as the 
strongest opponent, after Cuvier, of the theory of descent- 
© Our Livine Wortp.—This work, now publishing in numbers, 
is, in the language of the title-page, an artistic edition of the Rev. 
: G. Wood’s Natural History of the Animal Creation. It is pub- 
lished by Selmar Hess, of New York, and edited for distribution 
in this country by Dr. J: B. Holder. The parts before us (27 to 32) 
finish the birds, discuss the reptiles and batrachians, and begin 
the account of the fishes. As will be seen by the samples illus- 
trating this notice, the illustrations, which are mostly taken from 
Brehm’s Thierleben, are very superior to any elsewhere printed, 
and give much value to the work. 
The oleographs are also copies, by Mr. Prang, of those in 
Brehm’s popular work. We should like to have had the remark- 
able characteristics of the New Zealand Sphenodon given. As it is 
