NATUKAL SCIENCE NEWS. 



171 



day, in almost any part of the 

 United States, a man may pursue 

 living creatures otherwise than for 

 sport, and talk of them for another 

 object than passing an idle hour, 

 and nevertheless retain the respect 

 of the community; if in short the 

 occupations of natural history col- 

 lecting aod teaching are now hon- 

 orable and at least more lucrative 

 than before, it is to Agassiz more 

 than any other man that the change 

 must be ascribed." 



Professor Wilder has this to say 



of 



AGASSIZ'S FAITH. 



"On the 8th of August, 1873, 

 but a few months before his death, 

 speaking of the recent loss of a 

 valued assistant, Agassiz said: 

 "My time will come soon, and I 

 am ready." How many of us can 

 say that with sincerity? 



"His published writings, his 1 

 private speech and his daily life 

 gave assurance of his faith in a 

 wise and tender Father, but he 

 would not discuss dogmas, and 

 repelled as an impertinence the 

 too common- American fashion of 

 inquiring what church a man at- 

 tends. Twenty-five years ago 

 there was much less readily than 

 now admitted to be a distinction 

 between ecclesiastical observance 

 and religious belief, so that, while 

 criticised as a bigot by some scien- 

 tists, Agassiz was attacked by 

 some theologians as an infidel, be- 

 cause he could not reconcile the 

 facts of geology with ordinary in- 

 terpretation of the literal sense of 

 Scripture. He did not deny that 

 the Bible may be the Divine Word; 

 he simply confessed his personal 

 inaptitude for unraveling its mys- 

 teries; but he did feel that, without 

 presumption and with some hope 

 of successand usefulness, he might 

 devote his life to the exposition of 

 that other revelation of God to 

 man, Nature." 



A single incident illustrates 



THE 1 ENDER SIDE OF AGASSIZ'S NATURE 



"Weighted from an early age 

 with labors and cares which over- 

 taxed even his great powers of 

 body and mind, the tender side of 

 Agassiz's nature was not seen by 

 all. A single incident may show 

 the readiness with which it could 

 assert itself. For a certain piece 

 of work an elderly German artist 

 had come to Cambridge, leaving a 

 large family in a western city. 

 When his absence promised to be 

 longer than at first anticipated, to 

 relieve his loneliness, the old man 

 sent for one of his children, a lad 



of ten. Supplied with credentials 

 of various kinds, the boy reached 

 Cambridge, and was directed to 

 the house of "Herr Professor." It 

 was after dark, and Agassiz sorely 

 needed rest, after a long day at the 

 museum. Yet — instead of sending 

 a servant as some would have done 

 — he did not hesitate to take the 

 child by the hand, walk several 

 squares, and deliver him to the 

 anxious father. 



In 1869, the great naturalist 

 wrote to Professor Wilder, "Every 

 year I am less inclined to work for 

 money." This was in strict con- 

 formity with 



AGASSIZ'S LIFE PURPOSE. 



The following passage is quoted 

 from an address delivered by Pro- 

 fessor Agassiz on the centennial 

 anniversary of Alexander von 

 Humboldt, Sept. 14, 1869. 



"The physical suffering of hu- 

 manity, the wants of the poor, the 

 craving of the hungry and naked, 

 appeal to the sympathy of every- 

 one who has a human heart. But 

 there are necessities which only 

 the destitute student knows; there 

 is a hunger and thirst which only 

 the highest charity can understand 

 and relieve, and on this solemn oc- 

 casion let me say, that every dollar 

 given for higher education, in what- 

 ever department of knowledge, is 

 likely to have a greater influence 

 upon the future character of our 

 nation than even the thousands 

 and hundreds of thousands and 

 millions which have already been 

 spent and are daily spending to 

 raise material ease and comfort." 



To further these noble aims of 

 Agassiz, to give wider extention to 

 a knowledge of his work, and to 

 stimulate the young to follow in 

 his footsteps, is the chief aim and 

 motive of the Agassiz Association. 

 — H. H. Ballard, Pres. of Agassiz 

 Association. 



Cross Roads Meteorite. 



Last September I purchased from 

 Mr. B. E. Barnes of Boyett, N. 

 C. (who secured it of the finder 

 about three weeks after it fell), a 

 small aerolite. It fell in the early 

 morning about five o'clock, May 

 24th, 1892, in the township of 

 Cross Roads, Wilson Co., N. C. , 

 and was seen by a young man 

 named Gray Bass, who was only 

 about two hundred feet distant. 

 He seems to have been frightened 



by the sight and sound and waited 

 two or three hours before going to 

 the spot. With a stick he then 

 dug up the meteorite, which pen- 

 etrated 4 or 5 inches into the 

 packed but sodded earth close by 

 a road bed. Young Bass also 

 states that some of the grass near 

 the spot was dead and looked as 

 if killed by fire! He further says 

 that he thought the meteorite came 

 from the northwest. From the 

 testimony of others who heard it, 

 however, it seems undoubtedly to 

 have come from exactly the oppo- 

 site direction, having been heard 

 as far away as eighteen miles in a 

 S. E. direction. Among those 

 who heard it was a colored boy 

 one quarter of a mile to the 

 S. E., Mieajoh Hales, four to six 

 miles to the S. E. who describes 

 the noise as "somewhat like thun- 

 der accompanied by lesser sounds 

 like the report of pistols or the 

 snapping of burning reeds." An- 

 other man, Edward S. Dees, dis- 

 tant five or six miles nearly south, 

 wrote in answer to my inquiries, 

 that one clear morning before sun- 

 rise sometime in May he was in 

 the open field and heard a peculiar 

 noise which lasted a quarter of a 

 minute and sounded like "a freight 

 train crossing a trellis" — thought 

 it came from the S. W. Wm. B. 

 Scott, about eighteen miles to the 

 S. E., writes that before sunrise on 

 the 24th of May he and a neighbor 

 heard a noise "something like a 

 sky rocket but more like thunder 

 which went off in a northern direc- 

 tion." 



Mr. Barnes sent the stone first 

 to the National Museum and a frag- 

 ment weighing 4^ grams was 

 broken off. With the exception of 

 this piece nothing has been taken 

 from it since it was picked up; 

 several small chips however were 

 broken off before it reached the 

 ground and the broken surface 

 partly crusted again. It now 

 weighs 157 grams and it would 

 probably have weighed about 200 

 grams, if it had reached the earth 

 unbroken. 



The thick even crust coating the 

 meteorite indicates that it was a 

 complete individual and not one of 

 a shower. The freshly broken 

 surface is of the usual gray color 

 and the structure is chondritic. 

 The dimensions of the stone are 1, 

 2 and 2)2 inches. The specific 

 gravity is 3.67, which is somewhat 

 greater than most meteorites of 

 this class, indicating a little more 

 iron. Edwin E. Howell. 



