The Agassiz Memorials. 221 



self — that the results of all his investigations should 

 be given to American and not to foreign institutions ; 

 and to the day of his death he broke not the self- 

 imposed obligation. He had cast his life and lot 

 amongst us ; and the communication of discoveries 

 to others abroad — who, however, were no less his 

 friends, admirers, and co-labourers — he deemed a 

 special act of treason. 



The many wants he discovered, upon assuming 

 his professorship in Cambridge, would have dis- 

 heartened and dismayed others less ardent and self- 

 reliant. You recollect with what quaint and good 

 humor he described the few dried fishes forming the 

 collection of natural history, by which he was expect- 

 ed to illustrate his lectures and investigations. That 

 want aroused in his mind the desire, and fixed the 

 purpose, to found a museum of zoology which should 

 surpass the most complete in Europe — not as a 

 mere measure of vastness, but as the only proper 

 means of affording the necessary material for the 

 use of students, and for aiding the broader studies 

 of the advanced naturalist. With constant thinking, 

 the plan grew in scope and definiteness. Here men 

 high in their special studies could thoroughly 

 describe and classify every obtainable specimen, and 

 designate their relation with each other ; whilst the 

 fossils of buried ages should reveal their story, and 

 exhibit their correlation with the present epoch. 

 From a critical discussion of such aggregated results, 

 we may be assured that the law of development in 

 the natural history of the world, whatever it may be, 

 would be demonstrated. 



