Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 71.djvu/554

548 of Agassiz, and the broadening views of Agassiz on the work of this important branch of the national government was marked. The American Association for the Advancement of Science is indebted to Agassiz for the remodeling of the old Society of Geologists and Naturalists along the line of the British Association, of which he had long been a member. He became president of the association in 1851. Agassiz, Bache and Henry were the leading spirits in originating the National Academy of Sciences. The character of the man is indicated by the fact that the highest authorities in art, science and literature were immediately drawn to him and found in him a true friend and a charming companion.

The students associated with Agassiz at the dedication of the museum in Cambridge with few exceptions became heads of many of the great museums of the country.

Professor Hyatt was, at the time of his death, custodian of the Boston Society of Natural History. Dr. Scudder had preceded him in the same office. Professor Shaler continued at Harvard as professor of geology and became dean of the Lawrence Scientific School. Professor Putnam, one of the originators of the Peabody Academy of Science in Salem, and for years director of its museum, is now director of the Peabody Museum at Cambridge. Professor Verrill has been professor of zoology at Yale since his graduation and is director of the museum at New Haven. Professor Packard, for some years director of the Peabody Museum at Salem, was at the time of his death, professor of zoology at Brown University. Professor Bickmore was closely identified with the inception of the American Museum of Natural History in New York, was its first director and continued in the office for many years, and the writer has for twenty-seven years been director of the Peabody Museum at Salem.

This record is certainly a credit to the great teacher whose pupils adhered to the initial impulse imparted to them by their master.

At the age of twenty-two, in a letter to his father, he wrote:

I wish it may be said of Louis Agassiz that he was the first naturalist of his time, a good citizen, and a good son, beloved by those that knew him. I feel within myself the strength of a whole generation to work toward this end, and I will reach it if the means are not wanting.

This boyish prophecy was fully established as attested by the glorious records of his life.

In view of the distracting state of zoological nomenclature at the present time with the habit of regarding the slightest deviation in structure as of generic value with the result that nearly every species has a separate generic name, it may be regarded as a misfortune that Agassiz could not have established on a sure and enduring foundation his various categories of classification. In a conventional manner it would be profitable to adopt his definitions, even if the groups have no real existence in nature. Only in this