138 
LIFE OF DEAN BUCKLAND. 
[CH. V. 
Agassiz always looked back with delight on his first 
visit to Great Britain. Guided by Buckland, to whom 
not only every public and private collection, but every 
rare specimen in the United Kingdom, seem to have been 
known, he wandered from treasure to treasure. Every day 
brought its revelations, until, under the accumulation of 
new facts, he almost felt himself forced to begin afresh the 
work which he had believed to be well advanced. He 
might have been discouraged by a wealth of resources which 
seemed to open out countless paths, leading he knew not 
whither, but for the generosity of the English naturalists, 
who allowed him to cull, out of sixty or more collections, 
two thousand specimens of fossil fishes, and to send them 
to London, where, by the kindness of the Geological 
Society, he was permitted to deposit them in a room in 
Somerset House. The mass of materials once sifted and 
arranged, the work of comparison and identification became 
relatively easy. He sent at once for his faithful artist, Mr. 
Dinkel, who began, without delay, to copy all such speci¬ 
mens as threw new light on the history of fossil fishes, a 
work which detained him in England several years. 1 On 
October 13th, 1834, Dr. Buckland writes to Mr. Vernon 
Harcourt: “ My fishing excursion with Agassiz has ended 
most prosperously ; he has caught too large a multitude for 
his publication without expansion beyond its already bulky 
dimensions.” Again in 1835 he writes : “I hope you will 
be able to get Agassiz another grant of ,£100 in considera¬ 
tion of his labours.” In a letter to Murchison, written 
in the same year, he says : “ Harcourt seems to agree in 
1 “ Louis Agassiz : His Life and Correspondence/' 
