lOO 



Louis Agasszz. 



ing, which holds to-day wherever the greatest suc- 

 cess is found. His lectures were fully attended, and 

 he drew to the institution scholars from every por- 

 tion of the country, who had heard of his fame and 

 were desirous of emulating his methods. Finding 

 the appliances for teaching crude and imperfect, 

 he immediately began to work upon the problem 

 that, when solved, resulted in the greatest compara- 

 tive museum in America — the Museum of Compara- 

 tive Zoology at Cambridge. There was at that time 

 no museum at Cambridge and no specimens, though 

 they were accumulating day by day under the 

 skilled hands of Agassiz and his friends. The labora- 

 tory consisted of an ancient shanty, which stood on 

 four water-logged piles on the Charles River near 

 the Brighton Bridge. Here specimens were packed, 

 and at the rude tables the students and their pre- 

 ceptors often worked, making under the leaking roof 

 and crazy walls many interesting and valuable 

 incursions into the fields of science. 



Agassiz now had abundant opportunity to devote 

 himself to marine zoology — a subject to which he 

 had always been inclined, but which from his resi- 

 dence in the interior he had never enjoyed. The 

 Coast Survey offered him every facility, and he made 

 many and valuable trips with Captain Henry Davis. 

 The work which he accomplished attracted the atten- 

 tion of Dr. Bache, then superintendent of the Coast 

 Survey, and recognising the results that could be 

 produced, he aided Agassiz in every way possible, 

 placing the Bibb at his disposal whenever the 

 opportunity occurred. 



