144 



NATUKAL SCIENCE NEWS. 



PENIKESE — A Reminiscence. 



By One of its Pupils. 



Copyright secured 1895. 



classes of pupils have been met. You are therefore 

 requested to send me your claims to admission, be- 

 fore an answer to your application can be given. 



Respectfully Yours, 



L. Agassiz." 



But a second year with Professor Agassiz was a 

 happiness too great for mortal realization, so he was 

 taken from us — "not lost, but gone before;" we can 

 only follow in his footsteps and search for him. We 

 will follow Nature to her beginning,- — but we will find 

 him again. The same patient, loving father, friend 

 and brother, shall again clasp our hand, and direct 

 our steps from Nature to Nature's God. 



The second year, and the last, of Penikese, was 

 conducted by Professor Alexander Agassiz, Professor 

 Agassiz's son, who after the death of his father, as- 

 sumed the responsibilities which the latter had left. 

 This term was conducted on very nearly the same 

 principle as the first had been. The "course" re- 

 mained unchanged, in the main, and nearly all the 

 old instructors and pupils returned. How hard we 

 all worked! It was a delightful summer! Had we 

 never attended Penikese the previous year, it would 

 have seemed perfect. But we mourned for our Mast- 

 er. We longed for his genial face and kindly voice. 

 To one, at least the second term of Penikese was but 

 the skeleton remaining in the closet of the first term. 



CHAPTER V. 

 Lectures: Morse, Putnam, Packard. 



We are now at length settled quietly to work for 

 the summer at Penikese. The bustle and excitement 

 and arrangement in detail of the work of the first few 

 days of our season are over, and we cheerfully "bend 

 to the oar," — of routine which is not routine, and of 

 hard work which is truly a pleasure. Our time is all 

 occupied: When we are not attending lectures, or 

 out dredging, or otherwise collecting specimens we 

 are in our laboratories dissecting specimens, using 

 our microscopes, observing the animals and plants 

 which we have collected, and which are lyi r g around 

 everywhere in pails and pans of water, or in copying 

 out our lectures. Our table is covered with knives, 

 scissors, forceps, hooks for holding back the sur- 

 rounding membranes from those upon which we are 

 at woik, and various other utensils. There are bot- 

 tles of alcohol, sea-water, glycerine, and other pre- 

 serving fluids — some with specimens in them and 

 some without; a large tin tray, about eighteen inches 

 long and a dozen wide, half full of alcohol and water, 

 in which are the remains of a skate-fish with the 

 brains exposed, which we are dissecting with a view 

 to showing the five pairs of nerves aud their sur- 

 roundings exactly as they exist in nature, and with 

 the outer membranes and flesh held back by pins, 

 which are inserted into the wax in the bottom of the 

 tray: and several birds, which had recently been shot, 

 were lying upon the table ready to be skinned and 

 mounted or dissected and bottled — as were our other 

 anatomical specimens. 



Then we go to our lecture room and take notes 

 from our Professors as they talk to us. Well do I 

 "remember how hard Professor Morse labored to im- 

 part to us some knowledge of the Molluscous kingdom, 

 or the so-called shell-fish. He told us of their position 

 in the animal kingdom, of how they were grouped 

 among themselves, of the internal structure of each 

 group, and of the life histories of many of the indi- 



vidual species. Under his direction, we dissected 

 many of the larger sea molluscs, which we captured 

 in our nets and on the beach at low tide, — and found 

 it a most pleasing occupation, to follow out the va- 

 rious systems which they exhibited, and to compare 

 them with those in both the higher and lower groups. 



I remember that one of his lectures was devoted to 

 the Snails. In it he told us of this great group, — 

 how that they were called by naturalists the Pulmo- ] 

 nata — from the Latin pulmo, a lung; and_/m?, I bear — 

 signifying; that which they in truth are, the lung- 

 bearing mollusks. Then he explained to us the three 

 great groups into which they were divided. How 

 well I remember those terrible names — for I learned 

 them by heart, so that I could repeat them and their 

 meanings over and over again — the Geophila, from 

 two Greek words which mean earth and loving, re- 

 fering to their terrestrial habits; the Limnopliila, also 

 from two Greek words which mean lake or pond [fresh 

 water] and loving, owing to the fact that while the I 

 former live on the land the latter prefer the shores 

 and mud-flats of, and mud in, fresh water pools, 

 ponds, and lakes; and the Thalassophila, or those 

 which love or live in the Greek t/ialassa or the sea, — 

 these being marine. His remarks were confined 

 mostly to the first two groups, more especially to the 

 land snails. He told us: how they lived under rocks, 

 stones, boards, the trunks of fallen trees and beneath 

 their bark, and even amongst the decayed leaves of 

 the ground; how they crawl from their places of con- 

 cealment and sun themselves, on warm spring days; 

 that there were no distinctions of sex amongst them- j 

 both genders being combined within each animal; 

 and that a little after the early spring they begin to 

 lay their eggs, in large numbers, bunched together, 

 and sticking to each other by a mucilaginous sub- 

 stance that also held the bunches to the boards, 

 stones, bark, or leaves under which they were laid; 

 snails' eggs are opaque and white, being longer than 

 broad. 



Then we learned that, if the weather were not too 

 damp, the young animals, with complete, though at 

 first small shell, appeared in the gelatinous substance 

 surrounding them, in a very few days after the eggs 

 were laid, — though it generally took nearly a month 

 for them to become fully hatched; that warm weather 

 hastened the hatching process; though the eggs were 

 seldom if ever laid in the snn; that the young hatched 

 themselves, by eating the shell of the egg which in- 

 closed them; that their growth was a rapid one; and 

 that they fed upon vegetable food. 



Here the Profeesor stopped to describe the teeth 

 and tongue of snails, and to draw innumerable dia- 

 grams of these organs, representative of the different 

 groups, families, and genera of this portion of the 

 molluscous kingdom. In continuing, he said, that 

 there were several species, however, which preferred 

 animal food, — one variety even feeding 'upon the 

 earth worms while another eat its own eggs. At 

 about the first frost snails hibernate, or in some snug 

 retreat, like that in which it has lived during the 

 summer, goes into regular "winter quarters;" it retires 

 further and further within its shell, forming mucous 

 membrane after mucous membrane as it goes, until 

 there are five to eight or more perhaps; — the functions 

 of thebody move slower and slower, until they at 

 length wholly cease; and that American species, as a 

 rule, are less gregarious than those of other regions. 

 Some species, he said, had no shell or other hard cov- 

 ering whatever, and were then called slugs; that these 

 (To be continued.) 



