Part 21

The winter of 1851 was spent in the examination of the Florida reefs and keys, a work undertaken at the request of Prof. A. D. Bache, at the head of the United States Coast Survey. The results were valuable in showing "how far the soil now building up from accumulations of mud and coral debris was likely to remain for a long time shifting and uncertain, and how far and in what localities it might be relied upon as affording a stable foundation," for building lighthouses, etc. Agassiz brought back for his museum a fine collection of corals, of all varieties and in all stages of growth, with drawings made on the spot, from the living animals.

This year he accepted a professorship at the medical college in Charleston, S. C., lecturing during the three winter months, between his autumn and spring courses at Cambridge. The overwork finally resulted in a dangerous illness, and he was obliged to discontinue it in 1853. The year previous he received the Prix Cuvier for his "Fossil Fishes." His fond mother wrote: "This has given me such happiness, dear Louis, that the tears are in my eyes as I write it to you."

He now issued a circular asking for collections of fishes from various fresh-water systems of the United States, and responses came from every direction. New England captains, when they started on a cruise, took out cans, furnished by Agassiz, for collections in distant ports. Fishermen and farmers, indeed all classes, heartily joined in cooeperating with the man who had said in the University at Munich, "I will be a leader of others," and he had reached the mark which he set for himself. In 1854 he was urged to accept a professorship in the recently established University of Zurich, Switzerland; but he declined, for he had one definite aim in America, to found a great museum, where the best methods of study could be adopted. He said in his "Fossil Fishes": "Possessing no fossil fishes myself, and renouncing forever the acquisition of collections so precious, I have been forced to seek the materials for my work in all the collections of Europe containing such remains; I have, therefore, made frequent journeys in Germany, in France, and in England, in order to examine, describe, and illustrate the objects of my researches; but, notwithstanding the cordiality with which even the most precious specimens have been placed at my disposition, a serious inconvenience has resulted from this mode of working, namely, that I have rarely been able to compare directly the various specimens of the same species from different collections, and that I have often been obliged to make my identification from memory, or from simple notes, or, in the more fortunate cases, from my drawings only. It is impossible to imagine the fatigue, the exhaustion of all the faculties, involved in such a method." He hoped to found a museum where students should have specimens for work, ready for their use.

In the winter of 1855, Agassiz, resumed his public lectures, as his salary of fifteen hundred was insufficient to support his family, but when the spring came he found himself exhausted by the extra work.

And now his noble wife thought out a plan to aid him. She opened a school in their house, for young ladies. Agassiz's surprise and pleasure knew no bounds when he was informed of the project. He immediately took charge of the classes in physical geography, natural history, and botany, giving a lecture daily on one or other of these subjects. The school, with sixty or seventy girls, was continued for eight years, Agassiz having the cooeperation of his brother-in-law, Professor Felton, the noted Greek scholar, and other distinguished men. This school was a blessing in more ways than one. All these years, the debts incurred by the publication of the "Fossil Fishes," and the glacial investigations, had burdened him. The wonder was that the genial, untiring worker could labor at all under this depressing load. Noble devotees to science! What have they not suffered to advance the cause of knowledge! We sit by our pleasant firesides and read what others have wrought for us, perhaps in want and sorrow of soul, and we forget to be grateful or to help lift burdens.

This school opened by the helpful wife made Agassiz a free man--no longer shackled by that worst form of slavery, debt. Well said John Ruskin: "My first word to all men and boys who care to hear me is, don't get into debt. Starve and go to heaven, but don't borrow.... Don't buy things you can't pay for!"

Indefatigable, versatile, comprehensive in mind, Agassiz at once planned another great work, to be published in ten volumes, though it was finally reduced to four: "Contributions to the Natural History of the United States." Mr. Francis C. Gray of Boston, a personal friend and a lover of letters and science, set the subscription before the public. Very soon, to Agassiz's great delight, he received the names of seventeen hundred subscribers, at twelve dollars a volume.

He had now reached his fiftieth birthday, completing his first volume of the new work on that day. His students serenaded him, and Longfellow wrote, to be read at the "Saturday Club," composed of Hawthorne, Holmes, Lowell, Dana, and others, this exquisite poem:--

It was fifty years ago, In the pleasant month of May, In the beautiful Pays de Vaud, A child in its cradle lay.

And Nature, the old nurse, took The child upon her knee, Saying: "Here is a story-book Thy Father has written for thee."

"Come wander with me," she said, "Into regions yet untrod, And read what is still unread In the manuscripts of God."

And he wandered away and away With Nature, the dear old nurse, Who sang to him night and day The rhymes of the universe.

And whenever the way seemed long, Or his heart began to fail, She would sing a more wonderful song, Or tell a more marvellous tale.

So she keeps him still a child, And will not let him go, Though at times his heart beats wild For the beautiful Pays de Vaud;

Though at times he hears in his dreams The Ranz des Vaches of old, And the rush of mountain streams From glaciers clear and cold;

And the mother at home says, "Hark! For his voice I listen and yearn; It is growing late and dark, And my boy does not return!"

This year, 1857, Agassiz received an unexpected honor--a call to one of the most coveted places at the Jardin des Plantes; the chair of palaeontology in the Museum of Natural History, Paris. Though obliged to refuse it because he considered his life-work to be in America, he appreciated the favor as also the bestowal of the Order of the Legion of Honor, and the Copley medal from England. Twenty-seven years before, he had received in Paris the aid of Humboldt in his destitution; now, two hemispheres competed for his services.

The following year, 1858, Mr. Francis C. Gray died, leaving fifty thousand dollars for the establishment of a Museum of Comparative Zooelogy, to be used neither for buildings nor for salaries, but purely for scientific needs.

"All things come round to him who will but wait," says Longfellow, in the "Falcon of Sir Federigo." Other gifts soon followed. Harvard University gave land for the site of the building. The Massachusetts Legislature gave lands to the amount of one hundred thousand dollars. Over seventy-one thousand was promptly subscribed by citizens of Boston and Cambridge. Agassiz contributed all his collections, worth thousands of dollars. The corner-stone of the museum was laid one sunny afternoon in June, 1859, and then the happy Agassiz hastened across the ocean, to rejoice with his mother, in her home near the foot of the Jura. She was glad and proud now that he had become a naturalist.

The museum was dedicated November 13, 1860. The plan included a main building 364 feet long, with wings 205 long, the whole enclosing a hollow square. The lecture rooms were at once opened. Especially welcome were teachers of schools, for whom admittance was free. His lectures were open to women as well as to men. This would naturally be expected, from the broad-mindedness of the man, and the respect he must have had for the capacity of woman, from such a mother and such a wife. "He had great sympathy," says Mrs. Agassiz, "with the desire of women for larger and more various fields of study and work." To such men women can never be too grateful.

In 1863, he helped to organize the National Academy of Sciences. He frequently gave lectures in the large cities, using the money for the further development of the museum.

In 1865 he started, with his wife and several assistants, for sixteen months of scientific investigation in Brazil, the expenses borne by his friend, Mr. Nathaniel Thayer, of Boston. He writes to his mother,--

"All those who know me seem to have combined to heighten the attraction of the journey, and facilitate it in every respect. The Pacific Mail Steamship Company have invited me to take passage with my whole party on their fine steamer, the Colorado. They will take us, free of all expense, as far as Rio de Janeiro,--an economy of fifteen thousand francs at the start.... I seem like the spoiled child of the country, and I hope God will give me strength to repay, in devotion to her institutions and to her scientific and intellectual development, all that her citizens have done for me....

With all my heart, "Your LOUIS."

The story of this expedition has been told, chiefly by Mrs. Agassiz, in that most interesting volume, "A Journey in Brazil."

On Agassiz's return, he gave a course of lectures before the Lowell Institute, and the Cooper Institute, New York, spending the summer at his pleasant seaside home and laboratory at Nahant.

The fisherman at Nahant would pull two or three miles to bring him a rare fish; and only for the pleasure of seeing him rush out of his little laboratory, crying: "Oh! where _did_ you get that? That is a species which goes as far as Brazil. Nobody has ever seen it north of Cape Cod. Come in, come in, and sit down!"

In 1868, Agassiz, invited by Mr. Samuel Hooper, joined a party of friends in an excursion to the Rocky Mountains. This year he was appointed non-resident professor at Cornell University, Ithaca, New York.

The Massachusetts Legislature now gave seventy-five thousand dollars, and private individuals an equal sum, to provide for the new collections at the museum. Later, the museum received from the Legislature twenty-five thousand more, and a birthday gift to Agassiz, of one hundred thousand dollars, was also used by him for his precious work. September 15, 1869, at the Humboldt Centennial Celebration, Agassiz delivered an eloquent address before the Boston Society of Natural History, and the "Humboldt Scholarship" was founded at the museum. The bread cast upon the waters by Humboldt had been found after many days.

Agassiz was now completely prostrated by overwork, and told by his physician that for the several months in which he remained shut up in his room he must not think. Yet he could not banish one subject from his thoughts, and, with tears in his eyes, he would sometimes exclaim,--"Oh, my museum! my museum! always uppermost, by day and by night, in health and in sickness, always--_always_!"

The great mind rallied for one more voyage of research in his beloved science. In the coast-survey steamer Hassler, with his wife and friends, he sailed December 4, 1871, around Cape Horn, landing at several places along the coast, gathering rich treasures from deep-sea dredgings, entering the Golden Gate August 24, 1872.

In October, Agassiz returned to Cambridge. Through the gift of Mr. John Anderson, a wealthy New York merchant, of the island of Penikese, in Buzzard's Bay, with its buildings and an endowment of fifty thousand dollars, a summer school of natural history was at once opened. This year was a very busy one. A series of articles were in preparation for the "Atlantic Monthly," in opposition to the views of Darwin on evolution. He had already published two successful books, "Methods of Study in Natural History," and "Geological Sketches." December 2, 1873, a lecture was given at Fitchburg, before a meeting of the Massachusetts Board of Agriculture. The next day Agassiz spoke of dimness of sight, and of feeling "strangely asleep," and on December 14 he was asleep in death.

He was buried from the college chapel, the students who loved him laying a wreath of laurel upon the bier, and singing his requiem. The noble mother, fortunately, had died six years before him.

They buried him at Mount Auburn. From the glacier of the Aar, not far from the spot where his little hut once stood, they brought a boulder for his monument, and from his old home in Switzerland, pine trees to grow beside his grave. He loved both countries, and both have shared in his sacred resting-place.

His work will never cease. His museum at Cambridge now has seventy-one rooms and twelve galleries, with invested funds of over five hundred and eighty thousand dollars, while the buildings and collections are valued at about seven hundred thousand dollars. It is now under the charge of Prof. Alexander Agassiz, the son of Louis, and to his constant generosity and devotion the museum is deeply indebted.

Agassiz said, "My hope is that there shall arise upon the grounds of Harvard a museum of natural history which shall compete with the British Museum and with the Jardin des Plantes. Do not say it cannot be done, for you cannot suppose that what exists in England and France cannot be reached in America. I hope even that we shall found a museum which will be based upon a more suitable foundation, and better qualified to advance the highest interests of science than these institutions of the old world."

Agassiz not only wrote books and built museums. He gave to the world a high ideal of a seeker after truth. He stimulated the intellectual activity of two continents, and blessed both of them by his own brilliant mind and his noble character.

CHARLES ROBERT DARWIN.

On Wednesday, April 26, 1882, sitting in the North Transept of Westminster Abbey, I looked upon a sad and impressive scene. Under the dome stood an oaken coffin, quite covered with white wreaths; close by were seated the distinguished pall-bearers, Sir John Lubbock, Canon Farrar, the Duke of Argyle, Thomas H. Huxley, James Russell Lowell, and others. Representatives of many nations were present; the great scientists of France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and Russia.

Of the thousands who were gathered to honor the famous dead, every person wore black, as requested on the cards of admission to the abbey. Perhaps never in the history of England have so many noted men been assembled on an occasion like this. As the choir, in their white robes, stood about the open grave, singing the "Dead March from Saul," the strains seemed to come from a far-off country, producing an effect never to be forgotten. Darwin lies buried close to the graves of Sir Isaac Newton and Sir John Herschel.

At Shrewsbury, England, February 12, 1809, Charles Robert Darwin was born, in a square, red-brick house at the top of a terraced bank leading down to the Severn. The greenhouse with its varied plants, the ornamental shrubs and trees in the grounds, became a delight as soon as the boy was old enough to observe them.

The mother, Susannah, the daughter of Josiah Wedgwood of Etruria, a woman with a sweet and happy face, died when Charles was eight years old, leaving five other children; Marianne, Caroline, Erasmus, Susan, and Catherine. Charles says of her in his autobiography, "It is odd that I can remember hardly anything about her except her death-bed, her black velvet gown, and her curiously constructed work-table." She evidently encouraged the boy's love for flowers, for he used to say, at school, that his mother had taught him "how, by looking at the inside of the blossom, the name of the plant could be discovered."

The father, Robert Waring Darwin, was a well known physician, a man of fine physique and courtly manner, who had amassed wealth by his skill and business ability. Charles's admiration of him was unbounded: "the wisest man I ever knew," he used often to say.

"His chief mental characteristics," said Darwin, "were his powers of observation and his sympathy, neither of which have I ever seen exceeded or even equalled. His sympathy was not only with the distresses of others, but in a greater degree with the pleasures of all around him. This led him to be always scheming to give pleasure to others, and, though hating extravagance, to perform many generous actions. For instance, Mr. B----, a small manufacturer in Shrewsbury, came to him one day, and said he should be bankrupt unless he could at once borrow ten thousand pounds, but that he was unable to give any legal security. My father heard his reasons for believing that he could ultimately repay the money, and, from his intuitive perception of character, felt sure that he was to be trusted. So he advanced this sum, which was a very large one for him while young, and was after a time repaid.

"I suppose that it was his sympathy which gave him unbounded power of winning confidence, and as a consequence made him highly successful as a physician. He began to practise before he was twenty-one years old, and his fees during the first year paid for the keep of two horses and a servant. On the following year his practice was large, and so continued for about sixty years, when he ceased to attend on any one. His great success as a doctor was the more remarkable as he told me that he at first hated his profession so much that if he had been sure of the smallest pittance, or if his father had given him any choice, nothing should have induced him to follow it. To the end of his life, the thought of an operation almost sickened him, and he could scarcely endure to see a person bled--a horror which he has transmitted to me."

Charles went to the day-school in Shrewsbury, when he was eight years old. "By the time I went to this day-school," he says, "my taste for natural history, and more especially for collecting, was well developed. I tried to make out the names of plants, and collected all sorts of things, shells, seals, franks, coins, and minerals. The passion for collecting, which leads a man to be a systematic naturalist, a virtuoso, or a miser, was very strong in me, and was clearly innate, as none of my sisters or brothers ever had this taste....

"I must have been a very simple little fellow when I first went to the school. A boy of the name of Garnett took me into a cake-shop one day, and bought some cakes, for which he did not pay, as the shopman trusted him. When he came out I asked him why he did not pay for them, and he instantly answered, 'Why, do you not know that my uncle left a great sum of money to the town on condition that every tradesman should give whatever was wanted without payment to any one who wore his old hat and moved it in a particular manner?' and he then showed me how it was moved. He then went into another shop where he was trusted, and asked for some small article, moving his hat in the proper manner, and of course obtained it without payment.

"When we came out, he said: 'Now, if you like to go by yourself into that cake-shop (how well I remember its exact position) I will lend you my hat, and you can get whatever you like if you move the hat on your head properly.' I gladly accepted the generous offer, and went in and asked for some cakes, moved the old hat and was walking out of the shop when the shopman made a rush at me, so I dropped the cakes and ran for dear life, and was astonished by being greeted with shouts of laughter by my false friend Garnett.

"In the summer of 1818, I went to Dr. Butler's great school in Shrewsbury, and remained there for seven years, till midsummer, 1825, when I was sixteen years old. I boarded at this school, so that I had the great advantage of living the life of a true schoolboy; but as the distance was hardly more than a mile to my home, I very often ran there in the longer intervals between the callings over, and before locking up at night. This, I think, was in many ways advantageous to me, by keeping up home affections and interests. I remember, in the early part of my school life, that I often had to run very quickly to be in time, and, from being a fleet runner, was generally successful; but when in doubt I prayed earnestly to God to help me, and I well remember that I attributed my success to the prayers and not to my quick running, and marvelled how generally I was aided.

"I have heard my father and elder sister say that I had, as a very young boy, a strong taste for long, solitary walks; but what I thought about I know not. I often became quite absorbed, and once, whilst returning to school on the summit of the old fortifications round Shrewsbury, which had been converted into a public footpath with no parapet on one side, I walked off and fell to the ground, but the height was only seven or eight feet. Nevertheless, the number of thoughts which passed through my mind during this very short but sudden and wholly unexpected fall was astonishing, and seem hardly compatible with what physiologists have, I believe, proved about each thought requiring quite an appreciable amount of time."

As Dr. Butler's school was strictly classical, Darwin always felt that, for him, these years were nearly wasted. He read many authors, Shakspeare, Thomson's Seasons, Byron, and Scott, but later in life, he says, lost all taste for poetry. This he greatly regretted, and said, if he were to live his life over, he would read some poetry every day. The book that most influenced him was the "Wonders of the World," which gave him a desire to travel, which was finally realized in the voyage of the Beagle. He did not forget his zest in collecting, at first, however, taking only such insects as he found dead, for, after consulting his sister, he "concluded that it was not right to kill insects for the sake of making a collection. From reading White's 'Selborne,' I took much pleasure in watching the habits of birds, and even made notes on the subject. In my simplicity, I remember wondering why every gentleman did not become an ornithologist.

"Towards the close of my school-life, my brother worked hard at chemistry, and made a fair laboratory, with proper apparatus, in the tool-house in the garden, and I was allowed to aid him as a servant in most of his experiments. He made all the gases and many compounds, and I read with great care several books on chemistry, such as Henry and Parkes' 'Chemical Catechism.' The subject interested me greatly, and we often used to go on working till rather late at night. This was the best part of my education at school, for it showed me practically the meaning of experimental science. The fact that we worked at chemistry somehow got known at school, and, as it was an unprecedented fact, I was nicknamed 'Gas.'...

"When I left the school, I was for my age neither high nor low in it, and I believe that I was considered by all my masters and by my father as a very ordinary boy, rather below the common standard in intellect. To my deep mortification, my father once said to me: 'You care for nothing but shooting, dogs, and rat-catching, and you will be a disgrace to yourself and all your family.' But my father, who was the kindest man I ever knew, and whose memory I love with all my heart, must have been angry and somewhat unjust when he used such words."