Part 18 (1/2)

LONDON, February 28, 1845

My husband thinks your plan of lecturing a very good one, and sure to succeed, for the Americans are fond of that kind of instruction We relish was pleasant, and if you have been practicing since, you have probably gained facility in expression, and a little foreign accent would be no drawback You ive your lectures in several cities, but he would like very ive a course at the Lowell Institute at Boston, an establishht earn enough to pay for a twelve reeable time at Boston, where there are several e to Mr Lowell to-morrow upon other matters, he will ask him whether there is any course still open, for he feels sure in that case they would be glad to have youMr Lowell is sole trustee of the Institute, and can nominate whom he pleases It was very richly endowed for the purpose of lectures by a et nothing like the same remuneration anywhere else

Lyell and Mr Lowell soon arranged all preliin his tour in the United States by a course of lectures in Boston before the Lowell Institute Ahe writes as follows to Mr Lowell

PARIS, July 6, 1846

Ti away, and I feel it a duty to write to you about the contemplated lectures, that you may not be uncertain about them So far as the subject is concerned, I am quite ready; all the necessary illustrations are also completed, and if I am not mistaken they must by this time be in your handsI understand from Mr Lyell that you wish me to lecture in October For this also I am quite prepared, as I shall, immediately after my arrival in Boston, devote all my time to the consideration of my course If a later date should suit your plans better, I have no objection to conforements, as I shall at all events pass the whole winter on the shores of the Atlantic, and be everywhere in reach of Boston in a very short tiive to my course the title of ”Lectures on the Plan of the Creation, especially in the Aniassiz introduced to the institution under whose auspices he first made acquaintance with his A reeting accorded to hier whose reputation had preceded him, ripened with years into an affectionate welcome from friends and fellow-citizens, whenever he appeared on the platform In the director of the institution, Mr

John A Lowell, he found a friend upon whose sympathy and wise counsels he relied in all his after years The cordial reception he e fae land

Never was Agassiz's power as a teacher, or the charm of his personal presence more evident than in his first course of Lowell Lectures He was unfae, to the easy use of which his two or three visits in England, where most of his associates understood and spoke French, had by no means accustomed him He would often have been painfully e only of his subject and never of himself, when a critical pause ca word, and rarely failed to find a phrase which was expressive if not technically correct He often said afterward that his sole preparation for these lectures consisted in shutting hi in review, that is, all the English words he could recall As the Lyells had prophesied, his foreign accent rather added a charm to his address, and the pauses in which he seeht to translate his thought for them, enlisted their sy with chalk on the blackboard was also a great help both to hilish was at fault he could nevertheless explain his raphic that the spoken as hardly missed He said of hi was accurate simply because the object existed in his mind so clearly However this may be, it was always pleasant to watch the effect of his drawings on the audience When showing, for instance, the correspondence of the articulate type, as a whole, with the her insects, he would lead his listeners along the successive phases of insect develop as he talked, till suddenly the winged creature stood declared upon the blackboard, almost as if it had burst then and there fro interest of his hearers culhted applause

After the first lecture in Boston there was no doubt of his success He carried his audience captive His treatdoreat types were shown in their relation to each other and to the physical history of the world, was new to his hearers

Agassiz had also the rare gift of divesting his subject of technicalities and superfluous details His special facts never obscured the comprehensive outline, which they were intended to fill in and illustrate

This sie was especially adapted to the audience he had now to address, little instructed in the facts or the noer curiosity A word respecting the quality of the Lowell Institute audience of those days, as new to the European professor as he to them, is in place here The institution was intended by its founder to fertilize the general mind rather than to instruct the selected few It was liberally endowed, the entrance was free, and the tickets were drawn by lot Consequently the working ood an opportunity for places as their eenerous, and the privilege of lecturing there was coveted by literary and scientific h order, and the tickets, not to be had for money, were as much in demand with the more cultivated and even with the fashi+onable people of the cohbors This audience, coly contrasted elements and based upon purely democratic principles, had, froassiz A teacher in the widest sense, he sought and found his pupils in every class

But in Aeneral round, and it influenced strongly his final resolve to rereatest poas to be found in the sympathetic, hurew the genial personal influence, by which he awakened the enthusiasm of his audiences for unwonted themes, inspired his students to disinterested services like his own, delighted children in the school-room, and won the cordial interest as well as the cooperation in the higher aims of science, of all classes whether rich or poor

His first course was to be given in Dece, therefore, a feeeks to spare, heat New Haven to see the elder Silli been in correspondence Shortly before leaving Europe he had written him, ”I can hardly tell you hat pleasure I look forward to seeing you, and uished savans of your country, whose works I have lately been studying with especial care There is soious activity of the Aht of contact with the superior lorious republic renewshis first impressions of the scientific men as well as the scientific societies and collections of the United States, is given in the following letter It is addressed to his mother, and with her to a social club of intis he had been for years an honored guest

BOSTON, Dece no time to write out a complete account of my journey of last itive notes scribbled along the road in stages or railroad carriages They bear the sta Boston the 16th of October, I went by railroad to New Haven, passing through Springfield The rapidity of the locohtful to those who are unused to it, but you adapt yourself to the speed, and soon becohtest delay I well understand that an antipathy for thisinfernal in the irresistible power of stea with the swiftness of lightning The habits growing out of continued contact with railroads, and the influence they exert on a portion of the coreeable until one is familiar with the about pell-s, hat-boxes, all in the saoes to pieces no one is astonished; never

The reatly from ours that it see thement at all upon a population so active and mobile as that of the Northern States of the Union, without having lived a time I do not therefore attempt any such estimate I can only say that the educated Aing to the uters exceeds any that I have ht even add that if I could co it would be of an excess, rather than a lack, of attention I have often found it difficult to make it understood that the hotel, where I can work at my ease, suits me better than the proffered hospitality

But what a country is this! all along the road between Boston and Springfield are ancient moraines and polished rocks No one who had seen thelaciers could hesitate as to the real agency by which all these erraticthe country, have been transported I have had the pleasure of converting already several of the ; aers, ill deliver a public lecture upon the subject next Tuesday before a large audience

A characteristic feature of As where addresses are delivered Shortly afterof some three thousand work could have been more respectable and well-conducted All were neatly dressed; even the sie sight to see such an asse a library, and listening attentively in perfect quiet for two hours to an address on the advantages of education, of reading, and theusefully the leisure moments of a workman's life Theand fore I have not yet seen a ar, except in New York, which is a sink for the eet the advantages of our old civilization Far fros to you and in which you have grown up

Generations must pass before America will have the collections of art and science which adorn our cities, or the establishments for public instruction, sanctuaries as it were, consecrated by the devotion of those who give theain a livelihood or to h, or have taken sufficiently deep root in the habits of the people, to be safe from innovation; very few institutions offer a combination of studies such as, in its ensemble, meets the dele efforts of individuals or of corporations, too often guided by the needs of the moment Thus Aher instruction in our old Europe Objects of art are curiosities but little appreciated and usually still less understood On the other hand, the whole population shares in the advanced education provided for allFrofield the railroad follows the course of the Connecticut as far as Hartford, turning then directly toward the sea-coast The valley strikingly rese The saarre ( Trias) everywhere The forest reminds one of Odenwald and of Baden-Baden Nearer the coast are cones of basalt like those of Brissac and the Kaiserstuhl The erratic phenoion; polished rocks everywhere, nificent furrows on the sandstone and on the basalt, and parallelthemselves like ramparts upon the plain

At New Haven I passed several days at the house of Professor Silliman, hom I have been in correspondence for several years The University (Yale) owes to the efforts of the Professor a fine collection of minerals and extensive physical and chemical apparatus Silliman is the patriarch of science in America For thirty years he has edited an ih which, ever since its foundation, European scientific researches have reached AmericaOne of his sons-in-law, Mr Shepard, ( An error: Mr Shepard was not the son-in-law of Professor Silliman--ED) is also chemical professor in the University of South Carolina Another, Mr Dana, still a very young uished naturalist of the United States He was a member of the expedition around the world under the conificent voluraphs of all the species of polyps and corals, with curious observations on their rowth and on the coral islands I was surprised to find in the collection at New Haven a fine specien, the ”homo diluvii testis” of Scheuchzer

From New Haven I went to New York by stea Island and the coast of Connecticut, presents a succession of cheerful towns and villages, with single houses scattered over the country, whilethe sea; we constantly disturbed numbers of aquatic birds which, at our approach, fluttered up around the steaht farther on I have never seen such flocks of ducks and gulls

At New York I hastened to see Auguste Mayor, of whoiven you news, since I wrote to hied to continue my road in order to join Mr Gray at Princeton I stopped but one day in New York, the greater part of which I passed with Mr Redfield, author of a paper on the fossil fishes of Connecticut His collection, which he has placed at e number of fossil fishes of different kinds, from a formation in which but one species has been found in Europe The new red sandstone of Connecticut will also fill a gap in the history of fossil fishes, and this acquisition is so arre, a e took place in the anatomical character of fishes It presents an intermediate type between the priular forms of the jurassic deposits

Mr Asa Gray, professor of botany at Cae, near Boston, had offered to accoton We were to meet at the house of Professor Torrey, at Princeton, a small town half a day's journey from New York, and the seat of a considerable university, one of the oldest in the United States The physical department, under the direction of Professor Henry, is remarkably rich in models of machinery and in electrical apparatus, to which the professor especially devotes himself The museum contains a collection of animals and fossil remains In the environs of the town, in the ditches, is found a rare kind of turtle, reth of the tail I wish very e Professor Johannes Muller, of Berlin, who especially desires one for investigation

But I have failed thus far; the turtles are already withdrawn into their winter quarters Mr Torrey proet them because their bite is dreaded

After this I passed four days in Philadelphia Here, notwithstandingthe shores of the rich bay of Delaware and the banks of the Schuylkill, bethich the city lies, I was entirely occupied with the nificent collections of the Acadeical collections of the Academy of Science are the oldest in the United States, the only ones, except those of the Wilkes Expedition, which can equal in interest those of Europe There are the collections of Say, the earliest naturalist of distinction in the United States; there are also the fossil remains and the animals described by Harlan, by Godman, and by Hayes, and the fossils described by Conrad and Morton Dr Morton's unique collection of huine a series of six hundred skulls, mostly Indian, of all the tribes who now inhabit or for like it exists elsewhere This collection alone is worth a journey to Aiveall the types of his collection Quite recently a generous citizen of Philadelphia has enriched thisto the Duke of Rivoli He bought it for 37,000 francs, and presented it to his native city

The number of fossil remains comprised in these collections is very considerable; mastodons especially, and fossils of the cretaceous and jurassic depositsIine that all this is at my full disposal for description and illustration, and you will understand my pleasure The liberality of the American naturalists toward me is unparalleled

I must not omit to mention Mr Lea's collection of fresh-water shells,--a series of the nificent Unios of the rivers and lakes of A four hundred species, represented by some thirty specimens of each Mr Lea has promised me specieton, and could I have reer in order to label and pack theht have taken at once these valuable objects, which will be of great i the synony seen the astonishi+ng variations undergone by these shells in their growth, I am satisfied that all which European naturalists have written on this subject must be revised Only with the help of a very full series of individuals can one fully understand these anile specimens in our collections If I had tis made of all these forms, the collection of Mr Lea would be at my command for the purpose, and the ould be a very useful one for science

There are several other private and public collections at Philadelphia, which I have only seen cursorily; that of the Medical School, for instance, and that of the older Peale, who discovered the first mastodon found in the United States, now mounted in his museum Beside these, there is the collection of Dr Griffith, rich in skulls from the Gulf of Mexico; that of Mr Ord, and others