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Cincinnati Society of Natural History. 



ing insects," while at the school in Bienne, I leave you to 

 judge. 



Leaving Bienne at the age of fifteen, he passed two years at the 

 Academy of Lausanne, when it was decided that he should adopt 

 the profession of medicine — perhaps at the solicitation of his 

 mother, herself a physician's daughter, for I presume hij parents 

 now discovered that medicine, and its allied sciences, were more 

 congenial to his tastes and inclination than the profession of his 

 ancestors. Accordingly, he entered the medical school at Zurich 

 at the age of seventeen, where he remained two years, and after- 

 ward continued his medical studies at the University of Heidel- 

 berg, devoting himself chiefly to anatomy, physiology, zoology and 

 botany. At the age of twenty he entered the University of 

 Munich, and was soon the intimate friend of the eminent scientific 

 men there assembled. With Martius, the botanist, he studied the 

 organization and geographical distribution of plants ; he lived in the 

 house of Dollinger, the founder of modern physiology, and with 

 him studied embryology ; with Oken, the zoologist, he discussed 

 the principles of classification; with Fuchs he studied mineralogy; 

 and for four successive years he attended all of Shelling's lectures 

 on philosophy. He was the leading spirit in a select circle of 

 young men who formed a society to discuss scientific subjects, and 

 so interesting were the lectures and discussions, that it is stated 

 that the professors were glad to take part in them. 



During his vacations at Heidelberg and Munich, Agassiz traveled 

 on foot over the whole of Southern Germany and Switzerland, in- 

 vestigating the fresh-water fishes, and comparing those of the dif- 

 ferent water basins of the Rhine, the Rhone, and the Danube, with 

 their tributaries, and collecting materials for his contemplated work 

 on the fresh-water fishes of Central Europe. Though still a student, 

 he had published several special papers, and, when but twenty 

 years of age, he was selected by Martius, upon the death of Spix, 

 to describe the fishes which that naturalist had collected in Brazil, 

 and on which he produced a folio volume in Latin, of so much 

 merit, that it at once placed him in the foremost rank of naturalists. 

 In this work he characterized nine genera, embracing forty-two 

 species new to science. So runs the record. But while all this 



