whole creation.  I did not then know how much more important it is to the naturalist to understand the structure of a few animals than to command the whole field of scientific nomenclature.  Since I have become a teacher, and have watched the progress of students, I have seen that they all begin in the same way.  But how many have grown old in the pursuit, without ever rising to any higher conception of the study of nature, spending their life in the determination of species, and in extending scientific terminology!  Long before I went to the university, and before I began to study natural history under the guidance of men who were masters in the science during the early part of this century, I perceived that though nomenclature and classification, as then understood, formed an important part of the study, being, in fact, its technical language, the study of living beings in their natural element was of infinitely greater value.  At that age—­namely, about fifteen—­I spent most of the time I could spare from classical and mathematical studies in hunting the neighboring woods and meadows for birds, insects, and land and fresh-water shells.  My room became a little menagerie, while the stone basin under the fountain in our yard was my reservoir for all the fishes I could catch.  Indeed, collecting, fishing, and raising caterpillars, from which I reared fresh, beautiful butterflies, were then my chief pastimes.  What I know of the habits of the fresh-water fishes of Central Europe I mostly learned at that time; and I may add, that when afterward I obtained access to a large library and could consult the works of Bloch and Lacepede, the only extensive works on fishes then in existence.  I wondered that they contained so little about their habits, natural attitudes, and mode of action, with which I was so familiar.”

[Illustration:  J.L.R.  AGASSIZ.]

It is this way of looking at things that gives to Agassiz’s writings their literary and popular interest.  He was born in Mortier, Canton Fribourg, May 28th, 1807, the son of a clergyman, who sent his gifted son to the Universities of Zuerich, Heidelberg, and Munich, where he acquired reputation for his brilliant powers, and entered into the enthusiastic, intellectual, and merry student-life, taking his place in the formal duels, and becoming known as a champion fencer.  Agassiz was an influence in every centre that he touched; and in Munich, his room and his laboratory, thick with clouds of smoke from the long-stemmed German pipes, was a gathering-place for the young scientific aspirants, who affectionately called it “The Little Academy.”  At the age of twenty-two, he had published his ‘Fishes of Brazil,’ a folio that brought him into immediate recognition.  Cuvier, the greatest ichthyologist of his time, to whom the first volume was dedicated, received him as a pupil, and gave to him all the material that he had been collecting during fifteen years for a contemplated work on Fossil Fishes.  In Paris Agassiz also won the friendship of Humboldt, who, learning that he stood in need of money, presented him with so generous a sum as to enable the ambitious young naturalist to work with a free and buoyant spirit.