420 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 
I cite these events because they show that the early youth of Alex- 
ander Agassiz was passed in a period of domestic confusion and sorrow 
which may have left its mark upon him throughout life, for his great 
self-reliance was a characteristic rarely developed in those whose early 
years have been free from care. Life was a severe struggle for him, 
and though his victories were great they were won after hard-fought 
battles. 
After the departure of his father from Neuchatel Alexander re- 
mained with his mother throughout the period of her failing health, 
and after her death his father’s cousin, Dr. Mayor, and the Reverend 
Mare Fivaz brought him to America, where he rejoined his father in 
America in June, 1849, and entered the Cambridge High School in 
the autumn of the same year. 
The earliest published picture of Alexander Agassiz is by his father’s 
artist Dinkel and appears upon the cover of the first livraison of the 
“ Histoire naturelles des Poissons d Eau douce de l’Europe Centrale ” 
published in 1839. It shows him as a little boy of four years fishing 
upon the shore of the Lake of Neuchatel. 
In early life Alexander exhibited his independence of character and 
incurred the Prussian governor’s displeasure and his father’s reproof 
through his willful neglect to salute this official when he passed upon 
the opposite side of the street. He must also have shown his charac- 
teristic pertinacity, for before he came to America he could play well 
upon the violin, an accomplishment which he allowed to fall into abey- 
ance in later years. 
In the spring of 1850, soon after the arrival of Alexander in 
America, his father took for his second wife Miss Elizabeth C. Cary, 
of Boston, in whom he found a new mother throughout life, and he 
took the most tender care of her until her death long years afterwards, 
when he himself was an old man. Doubtless many of the finer traits 
of his rugged character were developed through the refining influence 
due to the care and teaching he received from this superior woman. 
Nature and his father made him a naturalist, and his reverence for 
his father was almost a religion with him. He became the first student 
his father taught in America. 
He entered Harvard College and graduated in 1855 with the degree 
of A.B., and then studied engineering, geology and chemistry in the 
Lawrence Scientific School, obtaining one B.S. in 1857, and another in 
natural history in 1862. During his college days he was much inter- 
ested in rowing and was bow oar of the four-oared crew which won the 
race against Yale on the Connecticut River at Springfield on July 22, 
1855, at which time he weighed only 145 pounds. He continued to 
row on the university crew until 1858, when the future President Eliot 
was one of his comrades in the boat. 
