﻿142 Cincinnati Society of Natural History. 



Prof. Agassiz, as we have seen, possessed a remarkable faculty 

 for observing little things, With him no object or circumstance in 

 nature was too trivial or insignificant for profound study or thought. 

 And it was from the study of little things that he derived the facts 

 which gave him his wonderful power of generalization. To me, 

 as an angler, his greatest works are those devoted to fishes ; and 

 this habit of observing and studying little things led to his new sys- 

 tem of classification of fishes, founded upon the form and character 

 of their scales. 



It is only by a contemplation of its parts that we can understand 

 an object in its entirety. The world is made up of atoms. The 

 microscopic portion of protoplasm called a cell, is the morpholog- 

 ical unit of all organisms, vegetable and animal. The lowest form 

 of animal known consists of but a single cell, and by studying this 

 one-celled animal "one can better understand the structure and 

 physiology of the highest and most specialized forms, even that of 

 man." (Packard.) 



When the boy Agassiz began collecting and studying the habits 

 of fishes, the cell theory was unknown, but there was no minnow 

 too small to escape his observation, and no part of that minnow 

 too insignificant for his closest scrutiny and study. In this way he 

 was the first to separate and properly define that most difficult 

 group of fishes, the Cyprinidce, as a family, by the form, number 

 and arrangement of their pharyngeal teeth ; and any one who has 

 ever examined the minute teeth in the throat of a minnow, can ap- 

 preciate, somewhat, the amount of careful study and observation 

 involved in his investigations. 



In his study of the salmon, trout and grayling species, he ex- 

 hibited the same careful and characteristic mode of inquiry. Of 

 this family Giinther says: "As much time and patience are re- 

 quired for the investigation of a single species as in other fishes for 

 that of a whole family. . . . The almost infinite variations of 

 these fishes are dependent on age, sex and sexual development, 

 food and the properties of the water." In consequence of these 

 variations and peculiarities, many species had been predicated upon 

 coloration alone. Agassiz showed the fallacy of this, for he found 

 that fish in clear, sunny waters, with gravelly bottoms, were highly 



