Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 77.djvu/429

Rh, which were not used by his father, and he confined himself to the study of living animals whenever this was possible. Thus it is that he ranks among the foremost of those systematists and embryologists who have devoted themselves to the observation of marine animals, but histology was wholly neglected by him. Nor did he ever take part in that stirring discussion of Darwinism which engrossed the attention of all of his contemporaries. It would be unfair to say that he did not believe in evolution, but the truth is that he was but little interested in the speculative side of science, excepting in so far as its deductions could be based upon observations of facts. In later life he came to regard the labors of the physiologist and of the laboratory experimenters upon the reactions of animals as beyond the scope of zoology.

But the walls of the museum and problems of zoology were too narrow a bound for such a genius of activity as Alexander Agassiz; moreover, he was poor and he required funds for the prosecution and publication of his work in science and thus in 1865 he engaged in coal mining in Pennsylvania, and in the following year he temporarily left the museum and became superintendent of the then unprofitable Calumet copper mine on the southern shore of Lake Superior, and in 1867 he united the Calumet with the adjacent Hecla mine, calling the combined property the Calumet and Hecla. It is due more to him than to any other man that this mine has produced the largest profits ever divided by any incorporated mining company, for the dividends up to December 31, 1907, amounted to $105,850,000. From the first days of his leadership in its affairs the company excelled all other mines in the introduction of heavy machinery and modern methods. Indeed its life depended upon the development of methods of mining upon a large scale, and so vastly has it grown that 83,863,116 pounds of fine copper were produced in 1907. As superintendent and director and afterwards as president of the company Alexander Agassiz steadily pursued the policy which led to this extraordinary industrial success, and out of the wealth it brought him he devoted upward of $1,000,000 to forwarding the aims of the museum which his father had founded, until he made it famous throughout the world for its excellent publications in science. He also expended large sums upon numerous scientific expeditions, the results of which he published in a manner that has never been excelled.

To have developed the greatest copper mine in the world would have taxed the entire energy of many an able man, but so extraordinary was Alexander Agassiz's capacity for productive labor that he became the sole author of 127 notable scientific works, many of them large books with numerous plates and illustrations drawn by himself, and he published many other minor papers. He was also the joint author of 18 and the patron or inspirer of more than 100 more which were written by specialists in America, Europe and Japan to whom he sent the collections he had gathered.