ii6 



Louis Agassiz. 



leading scientific body of the United States, and was 

 the originator of numerous natural history societies 

 throughout the United States. 



Professor Burt G. Wilder relates the following 

 amusing incident of Agassiz and his Harvard friends 

 while off on a collecting tour : 



A summer party of Harvard professors were 

 driven through the White Mountains. As the 

 coach slowly ascended a hill, Agassiz and others 

 would leave it and presently return laden with 

 stones and wild flowers, or ornamented with beetles 

 and butterflies pinned to their hats and the lapels of 

 their coats. Professor Felton sat alone in the coach 

 perusing a favourite Greek author. * Who are those 

 fellows ? ' at last asked the coachman, in whose eyes 

 plants were interesting merely as food for his ani- 

 mals, minerals as likely to impede progress, and 

 insects as apt to interfere with personal comfort. 

 * They are a party of naturalists,* said Felton. ^Ah! ' 

 replied he, * that accounts for it, poor fellows.' A 

 few days later he drove another party, to whom he 

 confided his experience as follows : ^ Last Thursday 

 I had the queerest lot of passengers you ever saw ; 

 they were men grown and dressed like gentlemen ; 

 but they kept jumping out of the coach, and like 

 little children ran about the field chasing butterflies 

 and bugs, which they stuck all over their clothes. 

 Their keeper told me they was naturals ; and judg- 

 ing by their conduct, I should say they was' 



Then," adds Professor Wilder, the great natural- 

 ist was taken for a harmless lunatic ; but he per- 

 sisted, and the people at last listened to his precept 



