xxix 



the Island of Penikese and of a large sum of money, he was enabled to found 

 a summer school of Natural History. The school started with about fifty 

 pupils, and Agassiz had the gratification of founding the first school of the 

 kind in the world. This additional strain on his powers at a season when 

 Agassiz had usually taken a holiday from his ordinary work was too much 

 for his already enfeebled health. On Tuesday, December 2nd, four days 

 before he was attacked with his last illness, he gave an address before the 

 Massachusetts State Board of Agriculture, at Fitchburgh, where he lectured 

 not ouly with ease but with an unwonted energy, an evidence, no doubt, 

 of cerebral disturbance. This over-exertion was so apparent that, by order 

 of his physicians, he gave up an engagement to lecture at New Haven on 

 the 8th. On the 5th he met his students, and on the 6th, while at work 

 in the Museum of Comparative Zoology, he was talcen suddenly ill and 

 retired immediately to his house and bed, never to leave them alive. 



His family physician, Dr. Morril Wyman, and his old friend Dr. Brown- 

 Sequard were almost constantly with him during his last illness. He 

 died on the 14th December, 1873. 



His funeral was attended at Appleton Chapel, Harvard University, by 

 a vast assembly of mourning friends from Boston and many other towns 

 far and near. The flags of the Municipality of Boston were hung half- 

 mast high, and the bells were tolled during the obsequies. To the solemn 

 music of the " Dead March in Saul " the family and a few near friends, 

 with the University Authorities, left the Chapel for Mount Auburn 

 Cemetery, where now rest the remains of L. J. E. Agassiz. 



At the time of his death Agassiz was engaged in his discussion of the 

 "Evolution of Types," the first paper of which appeared in the 'Atlantic 

 Monthly ' for December. 



Agassiz was much opposed to the theories of Darwin. His old scien- 

 tific friends, who, one after another, joined the evolutionists, never could 

 understand how he, who had so early in his career pointed the way to 

 what is now one of the strongest proofs of evolution, could resist his own 

 arguments. As a matter of history, it is an interesting record to turn to 

 the pages of his German edition of Buckland's ' Mineralogy and Geology,' 

 and read the notes, many of which would pass as the work of the most 

 advanced evolutionist. But in his later years he was eminently a theistic 

 philosopher. His argument against the doctrine of evolution has been 

 thus described : — 



1. There is order and system in organic nature, such as indicates 

 thought. 2. The evolution of species of plants and animals one from 

 another by natural causation is tantamount to a denial of this. 3. There- 

 fore doctrines of evolution are untrue. 



Agassiz received the Monthyon and Cuvier prizes and the Copley and 

 WoUaston Medals. He was a Foreign Member of the Eoyal and Liu- 

 nean Societies, a Foreign Associate of the French Academy of Sciences, 

 and a member of most other learned Societies and Academies. 



