Page:Familiar letters of Henry David Thoreau.djvu/180

 156 GOLDEN AGE OF ACHIEVEMENT. [1847,

Mr. Cabot, &quot; if you could have seen the eager satisfaction with which he surveyed each fin and scale.&quot; Agassiz himself wrote the same day : &quot; I have been highly pleased to find that the small mud turtle was really the Sternotliaerus odoratus, as I suspected, a very rare species, quite distinct from the snapping turtle. The suckers were all of one and the same species ( Catastomus tuberculatus) ; the female has the tubercles. As I am very anxious to send some snapping turtles home with my first boxes, I would thank Mr. T. very much if he could have some taken for me.&quot;

Mr. Cabot goes on : &quot; Of the perch Agassiz remarked that it was almost identical with that of Europe, but distinguishable, on close exami nation, by the tubercles on the sub-operculum. . . . More of the painted tortoises would be acceptable. The snapping turtles are very in teresting to him as forming a transition from the turtles proper to the alligator and crocodile. . . . We have received three boxes from you since the first.&quot; (May 27.) &quot; Agassiz was much surprised and pleased at the extent of the col lections you sent during his absence in New York. Among the fishes there is one, and prob ably two, new species. The fresh-water smelt he does not know. He is very anxious to see the pickerel with the long snout, which he sus-