Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence

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ific men with a cordial sympathy which left not a day or an hour of his short sojourn there unoccupied. T

ND TO LOUI

August 2

ntland from Paris tomorrow (Wednesday) afternoon. I shall be most happy to show you our Oxford Museum on Thursday or Friday, and to proceed with you toward Edinburgh. Sir Philip Egerton has a fine collection of fossil fishes near Cheste

eet at my house, on your arrival in Oxford. I shall hope to see you Wednesday evening or Thursday

ndship with Buckland, Sedgwick, Murchison, Lyell, and others of like pursuits and interests. Made welcome in many homes,

ve been discouraged by a wealth of resources which seemed to open 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 depos

were placed at Agassiz's disposition; his artist was allowed to work for months on their collections, and even after Agassiz came to America, they never failed to share with him, as far as possible, the advantages arising from the increase of their museums. From this time his correspondence with them, and especially with Sir Philip Egerton, is closely connected with the ever-

e from Professor Sil

e beginning of his re

announces his first Ne

UNITED STATES OF NORTH

on fossil fishes-livraison 1-22-received, with the plates. I also gave a notice of the work in the April number of the Journal* (* "The A

s in behalf of your work, and have

ambridge (Cambridge i

n. Josiah Quin

naeum, by i

re, President of the

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tions or individuals, but do not venture to pr

ities would become to him, or how often, in after years, he would traverse by da

we see by the following letter, Humbol

TO LOUI

, May,

ldt.) and renders me unfit to keep up my scientific connections, you will not be so unkind as to bear me any ill-will for my long silence. You are too well aware

hours a day on his works, reading or rather dictating, for a nervous trembling of the hand prevented him from using a pen. Surrounded by a numerous family; living on a spot created, so to speak, by himself, and in a house which he had adorned with antique statues; withdrawn also from affairs, he was still attached to life. The illness which carried him off in ten days-an inflammation of the chest-was but a secondary

rother's extensive correspondence with all those countries over which his philological studies extended brings upon me just at present, such a multiplicity of occupations and duties that I can only write you these few lines, my dear friend, as a pledge of my constant affection, and, I may also add, my admiration of your eminent works. It is a pleasure to watch the g

es as soon as they appear, in octavo. I devoured your fourth number; the plates are almost finer than the previous ones; and the text, though I have only looked it through hastily, interested m

ent volumes, altogether diabolical. I also complain a little, though in all humility; but I suppose it to be connected with the difficulty of conclud

ach Agassiz until the end of July, when he was agai

Z TO H

, Octobe

ies which I meet in completing my task in England. I have now been here nearly two months, and I hope before leaving to finish the description of all that I brought together at the Geological Society last year. Knowing that you are in Paris, however, I cannot resist the temptation of going to see you; indeed, should your stay be prolonged for some weeks, it would be my most direct path for home. I should like to tell you a little of wh

case I may be able to complete the greater number of the drawings I need. If I had obtained in France only half the subscriptions I have had in England, I should be afloat; but thus far M. Bailliere has only disposed of some fifteen copies. . .My work advances fairly; I shall soon have described all the species I know, numbering

same who had formerly worked with him in Munich. He also attended the meeting of the British Association in Dublin, stayed a few days at Oulton Park for another look at the collections of S

the Class of Echinodermata" appeared in the Memoirs of the Natural History Society of Neuchatel, as well as his paper on the fossil Echini belonging to the Neocomian group of the Neuchatel Jura, accompanied by figures. Not long after, he published in the Memoirs of the Helvetic Society his descr

the alternate retreat and advance of glaciers, now shrinking to narrower limits, now plunging forward into adjoining fields, by some unexplained power of expansion and contraction. Scientific men were awake to the interest of these facts, but had considered them only as local phenomena. Venetz and Charpentier were the first to detect their wider significanc

the valley of the Rhone. Here he spent a number of weeks in explorations, which served at the same time as a relaxation from his more sedentary work. He went expecting to confirm his own doubts, and to disabuse his friend Charpentier of his errors. But after visiti

to Sir Philip Egerton in relation to the sale of his original drawings, the only property he possessed. "It is absolutely impossible," he says, "for me to issue even another number until this sale is effected. . .I sh

rous relative of his own, Lord Francis Egerton. In the mean time, Sir Philip and Lord Cole, in order to make it possible for Agassiz to retain the services of Mr. Dinkel, proposed

umed a cosmic significance. It is worthy of remark here that the first large outlines in which Agassiz, when a young man, planned his intellectual work gave the key-note to all that followed. As the generalizations on which all his future zoological researches were based, are sketched in the Preface to his "Poissons Fossiles," so his opening address to the Helvetic Society in 1837 unfolds the glacial period as a whole, much as he saw it at the close of his life, after he had studied the phenomena on three continents. In this address he announced his conviction that a great ice-period, due to a temporary oscillation of the temperature of the globe, had covered the surface of the earth with a sheet of ice, extending

n, mingled with contempt, for what seemed to him the view of a youthful and inexperienced observer. One would have liked to hear the discussion which followed, in special section, between Von Buch, Charpentier, and Agassiz. Elie de Beaumont, who should have made the fou

on which he then believed to be one of theory rather than of precise demonstration. He was, perhaps, partly influenced by the fact that he saw through the prejudiced eyes of his friend Von Buch. "Over your and Charpentier's moraines," he says, in one of his letters, "Leopold von Buch rages, a

this new field of activity, with its fascinating speculations

DT TO

December

the king, nor the people, nor one's dearest friend. I maintain, therefore, that no one has told you forcibly enough how the very persons who justly admire your work, constantly complain of this fragmentary style of publication, which is the despair of those who have not the leisure to place your scattered sheets where th

ishes. In so doing you will render a greater service to positive geology, than by these general considerations (a little icy withal) on the revolutions of the primitive world; considerations which, as you well know, convince only those who give them birth. In accepting considerable sums from England, you have, so to speak, contracted obligations to be met only by completing a work which will be at once a monument to your own glory and a landmark in the history of science. Admirable and exact as your researches on other fossils are, your contemporaries claim from you the fishes above all. You will say that this is making you the slave of others; perfectly true, but such

the high esteem I bear you. The magnificence of your last numbers, eight and nine, cannot be told. How admirably executed are your Macropoma, the Ophiopris procerus, Mantell's great beast, the minute details of the Dercetis, Psammodus,. . .the skeletons. . . There is nothing like it in all that we possess upon vertebrates. I have also begun to study your text, so rich in well arranged facts; the monograph of the Lepidostei, the passage upon the bony rays, and, dear Agassiz, I could hardly believe my eyes, sixty-five continuous pages of the third volume, without interruption! You will spoil the public. But, my good friend, you have already information upon a thousand species; "claudite jam rivos!" You say your work can go on if you have two hundred subscribers; but if you continue to support two traveling draughtsmen, I predict, as a practical man, that it cannot go on. You cannot even publish what you have gathered in the last five years. Consider that in attempting to give a review of all the fossil fishes which now exist in collections, you pursue a phantom which ever flies before you. Such a work would not be finished in less than fifteen years, and besides, this NOW is an uncertain element. Cannot you conquer yourself so far as to finish what you have in your possession at present? Recall your artists. With the reputation you enjoy in Europe, whatever might essentially change your opinion on certain organisms would willingly be sent to you. If you continue to keep tw

HUMB

e trouble my horrible

at, however he might storm at Agassiz's heterodox geol

BUCH TO LO

er 22,

ads to vain analogies and speculations, the time for which is long past. I am grieved to hear that you are not well, and that your eyes refuse their service. M. de Humboldt tells me that you are seeking a better climate here, in the month of February. You may find it, perhaps, thanks to our stoves. But as we shall still have plenty of ice in the streets, your glacial opinions will not find a market at that season. I should like to present you with a memoir or monograph of mine, just published, on Spirifer and Orthis, but I will take good care to let no one pay postage on a work which, by its nature, can have but a very limited interest. . .I will await your arrival to give you these descriptions. I am expecting the numbers of your Fossil Fishes, which have not yet come. Humboldt often speaks of them to me.