AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOTES. 



9 



the reply was "You are wrong; you must look again; you must learn to 

 see." 



We were not left, however, without friendly words of intercourse about 

 other matters. The great master was engaged with his own work in the 

 same room, which was in the southeast corner of the first floor of the first 

 section of the Museum, of which this was at that time the only part con- 

 structed. Agassiz was then engaged in studying the great DeKonink and 

 other large collections of fossil mollusks, at that time recently received and 

 not fully unpacked. From time to time he gave expression to his delight 

 over some new discovery, and to the trays containing the specimens and 

 their labels were frequently added new labels of his own, on which the name 

 of a new genus or a new species was written, as the case might be. His 

 workroom, or laboratory, was almost daily the resort of eminent scientists : 

 Jules Marcou was almost a daily visitor, when the conversation was always 

 in French; Jeffries Wyman was a frequent caller, as was also Benjamin 

 Pierce, the eminent mathematician; on the days when Agassiz gave his 

 lectures many distinguished notables from Boston were present, among 

 whom was frequently Oliver Wendell Holmes. 



Besides Agassiz and his French artist Bourkhart and ourselves, the 

 room was occupied by the osteological preparator Guggenheim, with whom 

 conversation was always in German. For many years this old German 

 worked at preparing fish skeletons for the Museum, whose eccentricities 

 of dress and habits will be long remembered by the Agassiz students of that 

 early day. He was an inveterate smoker and snuff -taker, wore a wig, and 

 made his midday coffee amid the debris of his work. 



Time at first passed slowly with the two new students. They had been 

 given a difficult problem, and weeks passed with little progress in its solu- 

 tion. It was a trial of persistence, of character, as well as of keenness of 

 observation, a test to show whether the interest of the student was real or 

 imagined. While our efforts were at times disheartening in their results, 

 perseverance and continued application won the day. Gradually we saw 

 the light and were able to show, each in his particular problem, the succes- 

 sive stages of growth in the young coral, and discovered the law governing 

 the multiplication of plates in the successive stages of growth. We were 

 then given other subjects to study, Mr. Niles taking up crinoids, while I was 

 given a large miscellaneous collection of fossil gastropods to assort and 

 arrange according to their relationships. We were both happy, having 

 been assured by our great teacher that we were making good progress in 

 "learning to observe." 



Soon, however, I contracted a bad case of measles, which ended in 

 serious impairment of my eyes, from which I suffered for years after. For 



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