Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 77.djvu/431

Rh that he raised a wall between himself and the great unsympathetic world, which only those nearest to him and a few most intimate scientific associates could penetrate. In early life he had been buoyant in spirit, popular and beloved by all who knew him, but after the sorrows of 1873 he withdrew from broader contact with the world, and while he still remained cordially intimate with a few of the greatest leaders, from the rank and file of scientific men he held himself far and aloof. One must always bear the fact in mind that during the last thirty-seven years of his life he was a saddened and an ill man—one whose deepest love was buried and whose fondest hopes had been wrecked. We must also consider that a tendency toward this reserve probably came to him through inheritance from the German blood of his mother's side of the house, and it may in some measure be accounted for by the fact that English always remained a foreign tongue to him, for he thought in French, and in temperament he remained European rather than American. Yet among scientific men he became the greatest patron of zoology our country has known. In 1910, at the time of his death, the fifty-fourth volume of the "Bulletins" and the fortieth volume of the "Memoirs" of the Museum of Comparative Zoology were appearing. These publications had been started in 1863 and 1864, and in the number of important and beautifully illustrated papers they contain they have been excelled by only a few of the most active scientific societies of the world; yet the expense of producing them has largely been borne by one man—Alexander Agassiz.

In 1870-71 he visited many European museums to study specimens of echini for his great work upon this group and he was also especially interested in the results of the English deep-sea dredging expeditions in the Porcupine, little dreaming that he was himself to become a great leader in such work.

In 1873 when Mr. John Anderson, of New York, offered his father the Island of Penikese as the site for a marine biological laboratory, Alexander Agassiz used all his efforts to dissuade him from its acceptance, but failing in this he served for the first year as an instructor and the second as superintendent of the school. He gives a history of this experience in an article in 1892 in volume 42, p. 123. Mr. Anderson's final loss of interest in the laboratory and his refusal to consent to its removal to Woods Hole led to its abandonment. Although Alexander Agassiz, prompted by his deep interest in marine zoology, did not give up the attempt to maintain the school until after an appeal for aid addressed to the superintendents of public institutions and presidents of state boards of education throughout the United States had met with inadequate response. Then he himself paid the expenses and the Penikese School passed out of existence.