66 



Louis Agassiz. 



We shall see that Agassiz did not accept this ad- 

 vice any more than he did that of his friend Cuvier 

 who adjured him to beware of too constant work, 

 the work that kills. It was impossible for a man 

 like Agassiz to restrain his mental out-grasping. It 

 was his life, his nature, and was to be to the end. 

 Every day new plans were born. His reputation was 

 growing apace, and tenders of professorships and 

 requests for lectures came from all sides. M. de la 

 Rive, of Geneva, now begged his acceptance of a 

 professorship in the academy at Geneva, with a 

 salary of three thousand francs, while another invita- 

 tion greeted him from Lausanne, offering a similar 

 position with a liberal salary. But to all these he 

 turned a deaf ear, and in 1838 we find him with 

 work rolling up ahead like a billow of the sea. He 

 had established a lithographic printing-house in 

 Neuchatel, so that his plates could be made here. 

 He was now the manager of this business, a pro- 

 fessor of natural history in the college, and the 

 president and central figure in a number of socie- 

 ties ; at the same time he was engaged upon his 

 great work The Fossil Fishes^ investigating the 

 fossil echinoderms and mollusks, and delivering lec- 

 tures to students and friends on a variety of sub- 

 jects. In brief, he was the embodiment of mental 

 and physical activity, and in all the annals of scien- 

 tific men we find but few parallels to his energy. His 

 watchful and discerning eye seemed to penetrate the 

 sciences, many of which were at a standstill, giving 

 them fresh impetus. In every direction he saw 

 something new, some undeveloped feature. The 



