﻿138 Cincinnati Society of Natural History. 



labors of a great original investigator, such as has never before been 

 exhibited to the world." 



The first two volumes appeared in 1857, the fi rst containing an 

 " Essay on Classification," and a history of the North American 

 Turtles. The second was a treatise on the " Embryology of the 

 Turtle." The third volume appeared in i860, and a fourth in 

 1862 ; both these last volumes were devoted to the jelly-fishes. In 

 the "Essay on Classification," in Vol. I., Agassiz affirms that "Nature 

 is but the expression of the thought of the Creator, and that a true 

 classification will be found to be but an unfolding of the plan of 

 creation, as expressed in living realities ; that these realities do not 

 exist in consequence of the continued agency of physical causes, 

 but appear successively by the immediate intervention of the 

 Creator." 



In the investigation of American fishes, Agassiz was the first, 

 with the exception of Dr. Kirtland, of Ohio, to do justice to the 

 labors of the eccentric Rafinesque, who described the fishes of the 

 Ohio and its tributaries as early as 1820, but whose original and 

 somewhat peculiar methods had been ignored by the closest natur- 

 alists of America and Europe, though they did not hesitate, in 

 numerous instances, to appropriate as their own, many of his dis- 

 coveries. 



In 1865 Agassiz went to Brazil with a corps of assistants, under 

 the auspices of Nathaniel Thayer, of Boston, and explored the Lower 

 Amazon and its tributaries. 



The great influence and popularity of Agassiz, led to the estab- 

 lishment in 1858, of that magnificent enterprise, the Museum of 

 Comparative Zoology at Harvard. For this purpose Francis C. 

 Gray gave $50,000, the citizens of Boston $70,000, and the State of 

 Massachusetts the sum of $100,000. When the Legislature was 

 considering the matter, Agassiz appeared before them. "My 

 great object," he said, "is to have a museum founded here which 

 will equal the great museums of the Old World. We have a con- 

 tinent before us for exploration, which has as yet been only skimmed 

 * on the surface . . . My earnest desire has always been, and 

 is now, to put our universities on a footing with those of Europe, 

 or even ahead of them ; so that there would be the same disposition 



