Williams : Louis Agassiz. 



7 



made before, it was left for Agassiz to base it on anything like a 

 general hypothesis.-^ 



In the year 1846 Agassiz left Europe for the United States. It was 

 not his intention to make his home there, but his genial enthusiasm in 

 the cause of natural science proved so contagious, that scarce a twelve- 

 month was requisite to make America his most congenial home ; and 

 when he had finished his course of lectures at the Lowell Institute, and 

 had made a scientific tour of observation through the country, he found 

 a place provided for him as Professor of Natural History in the 

 Scientific School of Cambridge, Mass., founded, after his arrival in the 

 States, by the munificence of the Hon. Abbott Lawrence. Obtaining 

 an honourable discharge from his duties in Europe, he entered, in 

 1848, upon his labours at Cambridge. He also, from 1847 to 1850, 

 discharged the duties of Professor of Zoology and Geology in the 

 Medical School of Charleston, South Carolina ; and, 1851, those of 

 Psofessor of Comparative Anatomy in the same College. In 1854, in 

 conjunction with MM. A. Gould and Max. Perty, Agassiz published the 

 work entitled Umversal Zoology and General 8ketclie% of Zoology^ "contain- 

 ing an account of the structure, development, classification, &c., of all 

 types of animals, living and extinct." He had sent forth, four years 

 before, in 1850, his Tour of Lake Superior. It would be very pleasant, 

 if I had time, to make many extracts from this most agreeable narra- 

 tive : to introduce you to the retired major at St. Joseph's Island, the 

 lazy population at the Sault, the drunken chief, the canoes they make, 

 furniture, stowage, and comforts, the crews, the half-breed Indians, 

 the Canadian French, in w^hom was discovered an extraordinary 

 resemblance to the Irish, (and no wonder, as they were originally from 

 Brittany, the patois of which, the Bas-Breton, is a Celtic dialect, and 

 the people were doubtless descendants from Celts, and therefore near 

 of kin to the children of the land "washed by a melancholy ocean"); 

 Henry's cooking, John's genius, the Ojib-men, their simple and savage 

 habits, the scenery of the lake, the high rocky islands and promonto- 

 ries, the beaches and terraces rising one above another for hundreds of 

 feet, the Hudson's Bay Company's Forts, and the furs collected there, 

 the northern lights, the fire in the woods, the thousands of islands, the 

 comforts of a bed of lichen, the violent winds driving against the 

 northern shores, the swimming cows at Fort William, the Kakabeka 

 Falls, the dogs and the Kettles, the Indian sweating-house, the incidents 



8 The statement in the text is expLxnatory only of Agassiz's theory, and not of 

 present glacier theories. Agassiz hesitated to accept the Viscous Theory of Professor 

 Forbes. For a concise statement of the various theories, see Prof. Tiudall's i-'c/v/i-s- 

 of Water, pp. 155-175. 



