Agassiz and His Works. 205 



to the press, scientific and otherwise, which, if com- 

 pletely collected, would show the extraordinary 

 enterprise and vigour of the young student. The 

 fourteen years during which Agassiz held the chair 

 of Natural History at Neuchatel were especially pro- 

 lific in published works, being the period during 

 which he conducted the large lithographic establish- 

 ment where were made and published many of the 

 plates of the work on Fossil Fishes, those of Poissons 

 d'Eau Douce J the illustrations of the Embryology of 

 the Coregonus, those of the work on Glaciers^ and 

 the fine cuts of the work on Echinoderms, 



The work on the fossil fishes, already referred to, 

 was the finest thing of the kind ever published. It 

 contained a thousand species, nearly every one then 

 known to science, and was issued in a regal manner 

 in five volumes with four hundred plates. The mag- 

 nitude of the work can be realised when it is known 

 that it was ten years in appearing from the press. 

 This work is a monument to the industry, persever- 

 ance, and ambition of Agassiz. 



His next most important book was that on 

 Glaciers which gave him world-wide fame. This 

 work was the result of the glacial rocket which he 

 threw into the geological skies. Agassiz was at the 

 time president of an aspiring scientific body, the 

 Helvetic Society of Natural Sciences, and in his 

 address at the opening of the meetings at Neuchatel 

 he announced his views and threw down the glove 

 to the scientific world. That his views should take 

 shape in a volume was to be expected, and we have 

 as a result Etudes sur les Glaciers. This elaborate 



