Page:The Biographical Dictionary of America, vol. 01.djvu/62

AGASSIZ.AGASSIZ. Wollaston medal of the geological society. The vacation of 1836 was spent by Agassiz and his wife in the little village of Bex, where he met De Charpentier and Venetz, whose recently announced glacial theories had startled the scientific world, and Agassiz returned to Neuchâtel an enthusiastic convert. His conclusion that the earth had passed through an ice-age he announced at a meeting of the Helvetic society of natural sciences in 1837, and despite the incredulity and derision with which it was at first received, the address was afterwards published, and led to profitable investigation on the part of geologists. In 1836 were published his "Prodromus of the Class of Echinodermata," a paper on the Echini of the Nescomien group of the Neuchâtel Jura; a description of fossil Echini peculiar to Switzerland; and the first number of "Monographie d'Echinodermes." His work on fossil fishes steadily progressed, and he was greatly helped at this time by the sale of his original drawings, which were purchased by Lord Francis Egerton, and presented by him to the British museum. In 1837 he was offered a professorship at Geneva, and a few months later one at Lausanne, both of which he declined, preferring to remain at Neuchâtel. The Neuchâtelois presented him with the sum of six thousand francs and a letter of thanks on his decision being made known. In 1838 he opened a lithographic establishment at Neuchâtel, where his delicate plates were printed under his own supervision. It has been said of this period of the life of Agassiz that "he displayed during these years an incredible energy, of which the history of science offers, perhaps, no other example." In addition to his duties as professor he was issuing his "Fossil Fishes" and "Fresh-Water Fishes" and pursuing his investigations on fossil echinoderms and mollusks, the latter study leading to important results embodied in his volume, "Étude Critique sur les Molluscs Fossiles," which contained one hundred plates. In 1838 he made excursions to the valley of Hassli and to the glaciers of Mont Blanc, and later attended a session of the geological society of France at Porrentruy, where he reported his discoveries and conclusions, as he did later at the meeting of the association of German naturalists at Freiburg-im-Breisgau in the Grand Duchy of Baden. In this year Agassiz was elected "Bourgeois de Neuchâtel," a position which was remunerative as well as honorable. March 17, 1838, the King of Prussia gave 10,000 louis for the founding of an academy at Neuchâtel, and Agassiz was confirmed as professor of natural history. In 1839 he visited the Matterhorn and the chain of Monte Rosa, on both occasions being accompanied by artists and fellow scientists. During the winter of 1840, he recorded the results of his explorations in "Études sur les Glaciers." In this work he says: "The surface of Europe, adorned before by a tropical vegetation and inhabited by troops of large elephants, enormous hippopotami, and gigantic carnivora, was suddenly buried under a vast mantle of ice, covering alike plains, lakes, seas, and plateaus. Upon the life and movement of a powerful creation fell the silence of death. Springs paused, rivers ceased to flow, the rays of the sun, rising upon this frozen shore (if indeed it was reached by them), were met only by the breath of the winter from the north, and the thunders of the crevasses as they opened across the surface of this icy sea." In the summer of 1840, he established a station on the Aar Glacier, 8,000 feet above the sea, which became noted as the "Hotel du Neuchâtelois." Here the summer was spent in confirming previous observations and in studying the phenomena of glaciers. Immediately on his return from the Alps, Agassiz visited England, and with Buckland, the only English naturalist who shared his ideas, made a tour of the British Isles in search of glacial phenomena, and became satisfied that his theory of an ice-age was correct. He gave a summary of his discoveries before the British association in 1840. In 1843 the "Récherches sur les Poissons Fossiles" was completed, and in 1844 the "Devonian system of Great Britain and Russia" appeared. In 1845 he received the Monthyon Prize of Physiology from the Academy at Paris for his "Poissons Fossiles." During the years 1841-'45 Agassiz made constantly recurring visits of observation to the Alps, and in 1846 published "Système Glaciaire." In 1846 he accepted a commission from the King of Prussia to visit the United States to continue his explorations. His fame had preceded him, and before he left Switzerland he was invited to deliver a course of lectures at the Lowell Institute, Boston. His subject was "The Plan of the Creation, especially in the Animal Kingdom," and his lectures met with enthusiastic applause, notwithstanding his broken English. He delivered in French, by special request, a second course on "Les Glaciers et l'Époque Glaciaire." The Lowell course was repeated in Albany, N. Y., Charleston, S.C., and New York city, and other lectures were delivered in different parts of the country, where he journeyed seeking material for his Prussian report. In 1847, through the courtesy of Supt. A.D. Bache, of the U.S. coast survey, the steamer "Bibb" was placed at his disposal and greatly facilitated his researches. This generosity was one of the incidents which determined Agassiz to remain in America. In 1848 the Lawrence scientific school was established at Cambridge by Mr. Abbott Lawrence, and Agassiz, having honorably cancelled his engagement with the King of