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June 15 [1850, probably]. )
MY DEAR SIR, I have seldom been more
deeply gratified than by receiving your most
kind present of " Lake Superior." I had
heard of it, and had much wished to read it,
but I confess it was the very great honor of
having in my possession a work with your
autograph, as a presentation copy, that has
given me such lively and sincere pleasure. I
cordially thank you for it. I have begun to
read it with uncommon interest, which I see
will increase as I go on.
The Cirrepedia, which you and Dr. Gould
were so good as to send me, have proved of
great service to me. The sessile species from
Massachusetts consist of five species. . . .
Of the genus Balanus, on the shores of Brit-
ain, we have one species (B. perforata Bru-
guiere), which you have not in the United
States, in the same way as you exclusively
470 LOUIS AGASSIZ.
have B. eburneus. All the above species at-
tain a somewhat larger average size on the
shores of the United States than on those of
Britain, but the specimens from the glacial
beds of Uddevalla, Scotland, and Canada, are
larger even than those of the United States.
Once again allow me to thank you with cor-
diality for the pleasure you have given me.
Believe me, with the highest respect, your
truly obliged,
C. DARWIN.
The following letter from Hugh Miller con-
cerning Agassiz's intention of introducing
"The Footprints of the Creator" to the
American public by a slight memoir of Miller
is of interest here. It is to be regretted that
with this exception no letters have been found
from him among Agassiz's papers, though he
must have been in frequent correspondence
with him, and they had, beside their scientific
sympathy, a very cordial personal relation.
EDINBURGH, 2 STUART STREET, May 25, 1850.
DEAR SIR, I was out of town when your
kind letter reached here, and found such an
accumulation of employment on my return
that it is only now I find myself able to devote
LETTER FROM HUGH MILLER. 471
half an hour to the work of reply, and to say
how thoroughly sensible I am of the honor
you propose doing me. It never once crossed
my mind when, in writing my little volume,
the " Footprints," I had such frequent occa-
sion to refer to my master, our great author-
ity in ichthyic history, that he himself would
have associated his name with it on the other
side of the Atlantic, and referred in turn to
its humble writer.
In the accompanying parcel I send you two
of my volumes, which you may not yet have
seen, and in which you may find some mate-
rials for your proposed introductory memoir.
At all events they may furnish you with
amusement in a leisure hour. The bulkier of
the two, " Scenes and Legends," of which a
new edition has just appeared, and of which
the first edition was published, after lying sev-
eral years beside me, in 1835, is the earliest
of my works to which I attached my name.
It forms a sort of traditionary history of a dis-
trict of Scotland, about two hundred miles
distant from the capital, in which the char-
acter of the people has been scarce at all
affected by the cosmopolitanism which has
been gradually modifying and altering it in
the larger towns ; and as it has been fre-
472 LOUIS AGASSIZ.
quently remarked, I know not with what
degree of truth, that there is a closer re-
semblance between the Scotch and Swiss than
between any other two peoples of Europe, you
may have some interest in determining whether
the features of your own countryfolk are not
sometimes to be seen in those of mine, as ex-
hibited in my legendary history. Certainly
both countries had for many ages nearly the
same sort of work to do ; both had to main-
tain a long and ultimately successful war of
independence against nations greatly more
powerful than themselves ; and as their hills
produced little else than the " soldier and his
sword/' both had to make a trade abroad of
that art of war which they were compelled in
self-defense to acquire at home. Even in the
laws of some nations we find them curiously
enough associated together. In France, under
the old regime, the personal property of all
strangers dying in the country, Swiss and
Scots excepted, was forfeited to the king.
The other volume, " First Impressions of
England and its People," contains some per-
sonal anecdotes and some geology. But the
necessary materials you will chiefly find in the
article from the " North British Review '
which I also inclose. It is from the pen of
HUGH MILLER ON FISHING. 473
Sir David Brewster, with whom for the last
ten years I have spent a few very agreeable
days every year at Christmas, under the roof
of a common friend, one of the landed
proprietors of Fifeshire. Sir David's estimate
of the writer is, I fear, greatly too high, but
his statement of facts regarding him is cor-
rect ; and I think you will find it quite full
enough for the purposes of a brief memoir.
With his article I send you one of my own,
written about six years ago for the same pe-
riodical, as the subject is one in which, from
its connection with your master study, the
natural history of fishes, you may take
more interest than most men. It embodies,
from observation, what may be regarded as
the natural history of the fisherman, and de-
scribes some curious scenes and appearances
which I witnessed many years ago when en-
gaged, during a truant boyhood, in prosecut-
ing the herring fishery as an amateur. Many
of my observations of natural phenomena date
from this idle, and yet not wholly wasted,
period of my life.
With the volumes I send also a few casts
of my less fragile specimens of Asterolepis.
Two of the number, those of the external and
internal surfaces of the creature's cranial buck-
474 LOUIS AGASSIZ.
ler, are really very curious combinations of
plates, and when viewed in a slant light have
a decidedly sculpturesque and not ungraceful
effect. I have seen on our rustic tombstones
worse representations of angels, winged and
robed, than that formed by the central plates
of the interior surface when the light is made
to fall along their higher protuberances, leav-
ing the hollows in the shade. You see how
truly your prediction regarding the flatness of
the creature's head is substantiated by these
casts ; it is really not easy to know how,
placed on so flat a surface, the eyes could have
been very available save for star-gazing; but
as nature makes no mistakes in such matters,
it is possible that the creature, like the flat-
fishes, may have lived much at the bottom,
and that most of the seeing it had use for
may have been seeing in an upward direction.
None of my other specimens of bucklers are
so entire and in so good a state of keeping as
the two from which I have taken the casts,
but they are greatly larger. One specimen,
nearly complete, exhibits an area about four
times as great as the largest of these two, and
I have fragments of others which must have
belonged to fish still more gigantic. The
two other casts are of specimens of gill covers,
SPECIMENS FROM HUGH MILLER. 475
which in the Asterolepis, as in the sturgeon,
consisted each of a single plate. In both the
exterior surface of the buckler and of the
operculum the tubercles are a good deal en-
veloped in the stone, which is of a consistency
too hard to be removed without injuring what
it overlies ; but you will find them in the
smaller cast which accompanies the others,
and which, as shown by the thickness of the
plate in the original, indicates their size and
form in a large individual, very characteristic-
ally shown. So coral-like is their aspect, that
if it was from such a cast, not a fossil (which
would, of course, exhibit the peculiarities of
the bone), that Lamarck founded his genus
Monticularia, I think his apology for the error
might almost be maintained as good. I am
sorry I cannot venture on taking casts from
some of my other specimens ; but they are
exceedingly fragile, and as they are still with-
out duplicates I am afraid to hazard them.
Since publishing my little volume I have got
several new plates of Asterolepis, a broad
palatal plate, covered with tubercles, consider-
ably larger than those of the creature's ex-
ternal surface, a key - stone shaped plate,
placed, when in situ, in advance of the little
plate between the eyes, which form the head
476 LOUIS AGASSI Z.
and face of the effigy in the centre of the
buckler, and a side-plate, into which the
condyloid processes of the lower jaw were
articulated, and which exhibited the processes
on which these hinged. There are besides
some two or three plates more, whose places I
have still to find. The small cast, stained yel-
low, is taken from an instructive specimen of
the jaws of coccosteus, and exhibits a peculiar-
ity which I had long suspected and referred
to in the first edition of my volume on the
Old Red Sandstone in rather incautious lan-
guage, but which a set of my specimens now
fully establishes. Each of the under jaws of
the fish was furnished with two groups of
teeth : one group in the place where, in quad-
rupeds, we usually find the molars ; and an-
other group in the line of the symphyses.
And how these both could have acted is a
problem which our anatomists here many of
whom have carefully examined my specimen
seem unable, and in some degree, indeed,
afraid to solve.
I have written to the Messrs. Gould, Ken-
dall & Lincoln to say that the third edition
of the " Footprints ' ' differs from the first and
second only by the addition of a single note
and an illustrative diagram, both of which I
SECOND MARRIAGE. 477
have inclosed to them in my communication.
I anticipate much pleasure from the perusal
of your work on Lake Superior, when it comes
to hand, which, as your publishers have in-
trusted it to the care of a gentleman visiting
this country, will, I think, be soon. It is not
often that a region so remote and so little
known as that which surrounds the great lake
of America is visited by a naturalist of the
first class. From such a terra incognita, at
length unveiled to eyes so discerning,! antici-
pate strange tidings.
I am, my dear sir, with respect and admira-
tion, very truly yours,
HUGH MILLER.
In the spring of 1850 Agassiz married
Elizabeth Cabot Gary, daughter of Thomas
Graves Cary, of Boston. This marriage con-
firmed his resolve to remain, at least for the
present, in the United States. It connected
him by the closest ties with a large family
circle, of which he was henceforth a beloved
and honored member, and made him the
brother-in-law of one of his most intimate
friends in Cambridge, Professor C. C. Felton.
Thus secure of favorable conditions for the
care and education of his children, he caUed
478 LOUIS AGASSIZ.
them to this country. His son (then a lad of
fifteen years of age) had joined him the pre- N
vious summer. His daughters, younger by s
several years than their brother, arrived the
following autumn, and home built itself up
again around him.
The various foreign members of his house-
hold had already scattered. One or two had
returned to Europe, others had settled here in
permanent homes of their own. Among the
latter were Professor Guyot and M. de Pour-
tales, who remained, both as scientific col-
leagues and personal friends, very near and
dear to him all his lif e. " Papa Christinat '
had also withdrawn. While Agassiz was abr
o
sent on a lecturing tour, the kind old man,
knowing well the opposition he should meet,
and wishing to save both himself and his
friend the pain of parting, stole away with- v
out warning and went to New Orleans, where
he had obtained a place as pastor. This was
a great disappointment to Agassiz, who had
urged him to make his home with him, a plan
in which his wife and children cordially con-
curred, but which did not approve itself to
the judgment of his old friend. M. Christinat
afterward returned to Switzerland, where he
ended his days. He wrote constantly until
FINAL SETTLEMENT IN CAMBRIDGE. 479
his death, and was always kept advised of
everything that passed in the family at Cam-
bridge. Of the old household, Mr. Burkhardt
alone remained a permanent member of the
/
new one.
CHAPTEE XVI.
1850 - 1852 : JET. 43-45.
Proposition from Dr. Bache. Exploration of Florida Reefs.
Letter to Humboldt concerning Work in America. Ap-
pointment to Professorship of Medical College in Charles-
ton, S. C. Life at the South. Views concerning Races
of Men. Prix Cuvier.
THE following letter from the Superintend-
ent of the Coast Survey determined for Agas-
siz the chief events of the winter of 1851.
FROM ALEXANDER DALLAS BACHE.
WEBB'S HILL, October 30, 1850.
MY DEAR FRIEND, Would it be possible
for you to devote six weeks or two months to
the examination of the Florida reefs and keys
in connection with their survey ? It is ex-
tremely important to ascertain what they are
and how formed. One account treats them
as growing corals, another as masses of some-
thing resembling oolite, piled together, bar-
rier-wise. You see that this lies at the root
of the progress of the reef, so important to
LETTER FROM DR. BACHE. 481
navigation, of the use to be made of it in
placing our signals, of the use as a foundation
for light-houses, and of many other questions
practically important and of high scientific
interest. I would place a vessel at your dis-
posal during the time you were on the reef,
say six weeks.
The changes at or near Cape Florida, from
the Atlantic coast and its silicious sand, to
the Florida coast and its coral sand, must be
curious. You will be free to move from one
end of the reef to the other, which will be, say
one hundred and fifty miles. Motion to east-
ward would be slow in the windy season,
though favored by the Gulf Stream as the
winds are " trade." Whatever collections you
might make would be your own. I would
only ask for the survey such information and
such specimens as would be valuable to its
operations, especially to its hydrography, and
some report on these matters. As this will,
if your time and engagements permit, lead to
a business arrangement, I must, though reluc-
tantly, enter into that. I will put aside six
hundred dollars for the two months, leaving
you to pay your own expenses ; or, if you
prefer it, will pay all expenses of travel, in-
cluding subsistence, to and from Key West,
VOL. n.
482 LOUIS AGASSIZ.
and furnish vessel and subsistence while there,
and four hundred dollars.
What results would flow to science from
your visit to that region ! You have spoken
of the advantage of using our vessels when
they were engaged in their own work. Now
I offer you a vessel the motions of which you
will control, and the assistance of the offi-
cers and crew of which you will have. You
shall be at no expense for going and com-
ing, or while there, and shall choose your own
time. . . .
Agassiz accepted this proposal with delight,
and at once made arrangements to take with
him a draughtsman and an assistant, in order
to give the expedition such a character as
would make it useful to science in general, as
well as to the special objects of the Coast Sur-
vey. It will be seen that Dr. Bache gladly
concurred in all these views.
FROM ALEXANDER DALLAS BACHE.
WASHINGTON, December 18, 1850.
MY DEAR FRIEND, On the basis of our
former communications I have been, as the
time served, raising a superstructure. I have
arranged with Lieutenant Commander Alden
CONCERNING FLORIDA REEFS. 483
to send the schooner W. A. Graham, belong-
ing to the Coast Survey, under charge of an
officer who will take an interest in promoting
the great objects in which you will be en-
gaged, to Key West, in time to meet you on
your arrival in the Isabel of the 15th, from
Charleston to Key West. The vessel will be
placed at your absolute disposal for four to
six weeks, as you may find desirable, doing
just such things as you require, and going to
such places as you direct. If you desire more
than a general direction, I will give any spe-
cific ones which you may suggest. . . .
I have requested that room be made in the
cabin for you and for two aids, as you desire
to take a draughtsman with you ; and in ref-
erence to your enlarged plan of operating,
of which I see the advantage, I have exam-
ined the financial question, and propose to
add two hundred dollars to the six hundred
in my letter of October 30th, to enable you to
execute it. I would suggest that you stop a
day in Washington on your way to Charleston,
to pick up the topographical and geographical
information which you desire, and to have all
matters of a formal kind arranged to suit
your convenience and wishes, which, I am
sure, will all be promotive of the objects in
484 LOUIS AGASSIZ.
view from your visit to Florida. . . . You
say I shall smile at your plans, instead of
which, they have been smiled on ; now, there
is a point for you, a true Saxon distinction.
If you succeed (and did you ever fail ! ?)
in developing for our Coast Survey the nature,
structure, growth, and all that, of the Florida
reefs, you will have conferred upon the coun-
try a priceless favor. . . .
The Superintendent of the Coast Survey
never had cause to regret the carte-blanche
he had thus given. A few weeks, with the
facilities so liberally afforded, gave Agassiz
a clew to all the phenomena he had been
commissioned to examine, and enabled him to
explain the relation between the keys and the
outer and inner reefs, and the mud swamps,
or more open channels, dividing them, and
to connect these again with the hummocks
and everglades of the main-land. It remains
to be seen whether his theory will hold good,
that the whole or the greater part of the Flor-
ida peninsula has, like its southern portion,
been built up of concentric reefs. But his
explanation of the present reefs, their struc-
ture, laws of growth, relations to each other
and to the main-land, as well as to the Gulf
SURVEY OF CORAL REEFS. 485
Stream and its prevailing currents, was of
great practical service to the Coast Survey.
It was especially valuable in determining how
far the soil now building up from accumula-
tions 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.
When, at the meeting of the American Asso-
ciation in the following spring, Agassiz gave
an account of his late exploration, Dr. Bache,
who was present, said that for the first time
he understood the bearing; of the whole sub-
o
ject, though he had so long been trying to
unravel it.
The following letter was written immedi-
ately after Agassiz' s return.
TO SIR CHARLES LYELL.
CAMBRIDGE, April 26, 1851.
... I have spent a large part of the win-
ter in Florida, with a view of studying the
coral reefs. I have found that they consti-
tute a new class of reefs, distinct from those
described by Darwin and Dana under the
name of fringing reefs, barrier reefs, and
atolls. I have lately read a paper upon that
subject before the American Academy, which
486 LOUIS AGASSIZ.
I shall send you as soon as it is printed. The
case is this. There are several concentric
reefs separated by deep channels ; the penin-
sula of Florida itself is a succession of such
reefs, the everglades being the filled-up chan-
nels, while the hummocks were formerly little
intervening islands, like the mangrove islands
in the present channels. But what is quite
remarkable, all these concentric reefs are upon
one level, above that of the sea, and there is
no indication whatever of upheaval. You will
find some observations upon upheavals, etc.,
in Silliman, by Tuorney ; it is a great mistake,
as I shall show. The Tortugas are a real
atoll, but formed without the remotest indi-
cation of subsidence.
Of course this does not interfere in the
least with the views of Darwin, for the whole
ground presents peculiar features. I wish
you would tell him something about this.
One of the most remarkable peculiarities of
the rocks in the reefs of the Tortugas consists
in their composition ; they are chiefly made
up of Corallines, limestone algae, and, to a
small extent only, of real corals. . . .
Agassiz's report to the Coast Survey upon
the results of this first investigation made by
REPORT UPON FLORIDA REEFS. 487
him upon the reefs of Florida was not pub-
lished in full at the time. The parts prac-
tically most important to the Coast Survey
were incorporated in their subsequent charts ;
the more general scientific results, as touch-
ing the physical history of the peninsula as
a whole, appeared in various forms, were em-
bodied in Agassiz's lectures, and were printed
some years after in his volume entitled " Meth-
ods of Study." The original report, with all
the plates prepared for it, was published in
the " Memoirs of the Museum of Comparative
Zoology," under the supervision of Alexan-
der Agassiz, after the death of his father. It
forms a quarto volume, containing some sixty
pages of text, with twenty-two plates, illustra-
tive of corals and coral structure, and a map
of Southern Florida with its reefs and keys.
This expedition was also of great impor-
tance to Agassiz's collections, and to the em-
bryo museum in Cambridge. It laid the
foundation of a very complete collection of
corals of all varieties and in all stages of
growth. All the specimens, from huge coral
heads and branching fans down to the most
minute single corals, were given up to him,
the value of the whole being greatly en-
hanced by the drawings taken on the spot
from the living animals.
488 LOUIS AGASSIZ.
To this period belongs also the following
fragment of a letter to Humboldt.
TO ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT.
[Probably 1852, date not given.]
. . . What a time has passed since my last
letter ! Had you not been constantly in my
thoughts, and your counsels always before me
as my guide, I should reproach myself for
my silence. I hope my two papers on the me-
dusae, forwarded this year, have reached you,
and also one upon the classification of insects,
as based upon their development. I have
devoted myself especially to the organization
of the invertebrate animals, and to the facts
bearing upon the perfecting of their classifi-
cation. I have succeeded in tracing the same
identity of structure between the three classes
of radiates, and also between those of mol-
lusks, as has already been recognized in the
vertebrates, and partially in the articulates.
It is truly a pleasure for me now to be able
to demonstrate in my lectures the insensible
gradations existing between polyps, medusae,
and echinoderms, and to designate by the
same name organs seemingly so different.
Especially has the minute examination of the
thickness of the test in echinoderms revealed
SEA-URCHINS AND MEDUSA. 489
to me unexpected relations between the sea-
urchin and the medusa. No one suspects, I
fancy, at this moment, that the solid envelope
of the Scutellae and the Clypeasters is trav-
ersed by a net-work of radiating tubes, corre-
sponding to those of the medusae, so well pre-
sented by Ehrenberg in Aurelia aurita. If
the Berlin zoologists will take the trouble to
file off the surface of the test of an Echina-
rachnius parma, they will find a circular canal
as large and as continuous as that of the me-
dusae. The aquiferous tubes specified above
open into this canal. But the same thing
may be found under various modifications in
other genera of the family. Since I have
succeeded in injecting colored liquid into the
beroids, for instance, and keeping them alive
with it circulating in their transparent mass,
I am able to show the identity of their zones
of locomotive fringes (combs), from which
they take their name of Ctenophorae, with
the ambulacral (locomotive) apparatus of the
echinoderms. Furnished with these facts, it
is not difficult to recognize true beroidal forms
in the embryos of sea-urchins and star-fishes,
published by Miiller in his beautiful plates,
and thus to trace the medusoid origin of the
echinoderms, as the polypoid origin of the
490 LOUIS AGASSIZ.
medusae has already been recognized. I do
not here allude to their primitive origin, but
simply to the general fact that among radi-
ates the embryos of the higher classes repre-
sent, in miniature, types of the lower classes,
as, for instance, those of the echinoderms re-
semble the medusse, those of the medusse the
polyps. Having passed the greater part of
last winter in Florida, where I was especially
occupied in studying the coral reefs, I had the
best opportunity in the world for prosecuting
my embryological researches upon the stony
corals. I detected relations among- them which
o
now enable me to determine the classification
of these animals according to their mode of
development with greater completeness than
ever before, and even to assign a superior or
inferior rank to their different types, agreeing
with their geological succession, as I have
already done for the fishes. I am on the
road to the same results for the mollusks and
the articulates, and can even now say in gen-
eral terms, that the most ancient representa-
tives of all the families belonging to these
great groups, strikingly recall the first phases
in the embryonic development of their suc-
cessors in more recent formations, and even
that the embryos of comparatively recent
STUDIES ON THE SEA-SHORE. 491
families recall families belonging to ancient
epochs. You will find some allusion to these
results in my Lectures on Embryology, given
in my " Lake Superior/' of which I have
twice sent you a copy, that it might reach
you the more surely; but these first impres-
sions have assumed greater coherence now,
and I constantly find myself recurring to my
fossils for light upon the embryonic forms I
am studying and vice versa, consulting my
embryological drawings in order to decipher
the fossils with greater certainty.
The proximity of the sea and the ease
with which I can visit any part of the coast
within a range of some twenty degrees give
me inexhaustible resources for the whole year,
which, as time goes on, I turn more and more
to the best account. On the other hand, the
abundance and admirable state of preserva-
tion of the fossils found in our ancient de-
posits, as well as the regular succession of
the beds containing them, contribute admi-
rable material for this kind of comparative
study. . . .
In the summer of 1851 Agassiz was invited
to a professorship at the Medical College in
Charleston, S. C. This was especially ac-
492 LOUIS AGASSIZ.
ceptable to him, because it substituted a reg-
ular course of instruction to students, for the
disconnected lectures given to miscellaneous
audiences, in various parts of the country, by
which he was obliged to eke out his small
salary and provide for his scientific expenses.
While more fatiguing than class-room work,
these scattered lectures had a less educational
value, though, on the other hand, they awak-
ened a very wide-spread interest in the study
of nature. The strain of constant traveling
for this purpose, the more harassing because
so unfavorable to his habits of continuous
work, had already told severely upon his
health ; and from this point of view also the
new professorship was attractive, as promising
a more quiet, though no less occupied, life.
The lectures were to be given during the
three winter months, thus occupying the in-
terval between his autumn and spring courses
at Cambridge.
He assumed his new duties at Charleston in
December, 1851, and by the kindness of his
friend Mrs. Rutledge, who offered him the
use of her cottage for the purpose, he soon
established a laboratory on Sullivan's Island,
where the two or three assistants he had
brought with him could work conveniently.
LIFE AT THE SOUTH. 493
The cottage stood within hearing: of the wash
o O
of the waves, at the head of the long, hard
sand beach which fringed the island shore for
some three or four miles. There could hardly
be a more favorable position for a naturalist,
and there, in the midst of their specimens,
Agassiz and his band of workers might con-
stantly be found. His studies here were of
the greater interest to him because they con-
nected themselves with his previous researches,
not only upon the fishes, but also upon the
lower marine animals of the coast of New
England and of the Florida reefs ; so that he
had now a basis for comparison of the fauna
scattered along the whole Atlantic coast of
the United States. The following letter gives
some idea of his work at this time.
TO PKOFESSOR JAMES D. DANA.
CHARLESTON, January 26, 1852.
MY DEAR FRIEND, You should at least
know that I think of you often on these
shores. And how could I do otherwise when
I daily find new small Crustacea, which remind
me of the important work you are now pre-
paring on that subject.
Of course, of the larger ones there is nothing
to be found after Professor Gibbes has gone
494 LOUIS AGASSIZ.
over the ground, but among the lower orders
there are a great many in store for a micro-
scopic observer. I have only to regret that I
cannot apply myself more steadily. I find
my nervous system so over-excited that any
continuous exertion makes me feverish. So I
go about as much as the weather allows, and
gather materials for better times.
Several interesting medusae have been al-
ready observed ; among others, the entire
metamorphosis and alternate generation of a
new species of my genus tiaropsis. You will
be pleased to know that here, as well as at
the North, tiaropsis is the medusa of a campa-
nularia. Mr. Clark, one of my assistants, has
made very good drawings of all its stages of
growth, and of various other hydroid medu-
sae peculiar to this coast. Mr. Stinipson,
ano
