Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence Part 25

It may be added here as an evidence of Aga.s.siz's faith in the inst.i.tutions of the United States and in her intellectual progress that he was himself naturalized in the darkest hour of the war, when the final disruption of the country was confidently prophesied by her enemies. By formally becoming a citizen of the United States he desired to attest his personal confidence in the stability of her Const.i.tution and the justice of her cause.

Some light is thrown upon the work and incidents of these years by the following letters:--

FROM SIR PHILIP DE GREY EGERTON.

LONDON, ALBEMARLE ST., April 16, 1861.

MON CHER AGa.s.s,* (* An affectionate abbreviation which Sir Philip often used for him.)

I have this morning received your handsome and welcome present of the third volume of your great undertaking, and this reminds me how remiss I have been in not writing to you sooner. In fact, I have had nothing worth writing about, and I know your time is too valuable to be intrenched upon by letters of mere gossip. I have not of course had time to peruse any portion of the monograph, but I have turned over the pages and seen quite enough to sharpen my appet.i.te for the glorious scientific feast you have so liberally provided. And now that the weight is off your mind, I hope shortly to hear that you are about to fulfill this year the promise you made of returning to England for a good long visit, only postponed by circ.u.mstances you could not have foreseen. Now that you have your son as the sharer of your labors, you will be able to leave him in charge during your absence, and so divest your mind of all care and anxiety with reference to matters over the water. Here we are all fighting most furiously about Celts and flint implements, struggle for life, natural selection, the age of the world, races of men, biblical dates, apes, and gorillas, etc., and the last duel has been between Owen and Huxley on the anatomical distinction of the pithecoid brain compared with that of man. Theological controversy has also been rife, stirred up by the "Essays and Reviews," of which you have no doubt heard much. For myself, I have been busy preparing, in conjunction with Huxley, another decade of fossil fishes, all from the old red of Scotland. . .Enniskillen is quite well. He is now at Lyme Regis. . .

At about this time the Copley Medal was awarded to Aga.s.siz, a distinction which was the subject of cordial congratulation from his English friends.

FROM SIR RODERICK MURCHISON.

BELGRAVE SQUARE, March, 1862.

MY DEAR AGa.s.sIZ,

Your letter of the 14th February was a great surprise to me. I blamed myself for not writing you sooner than I did on the event which I had long been anxious to see realized; but I took it for granted that you had long before received the official announcement from the foreign secretary that you were, at the last anniversary of the Royal Society, the recipient of the highest honor which our body can bestow, whether on a foreigner or a native. . .On going to the Royal Society to-day I found that the President and Secretaries were much surprised that you had never answered the official letter sent to you on the 1st or 2nd December by the Foreign Secretary, Professor Muller, of Cambridge. He wrote to announce the award, and told you the Copley Medal was in his safe keeping till you wrote to say what you wished to have done with it. I have now recommended him to transmit it officially to you through the United States Minister, Mr. Adams. In these times of irritation, everything which soothes and calms down angry feelings ought to be resorted to; and I hope it may be publicly known that when our newspapers were reciprocating all sorts of rudenesses, the men of science of England thought of nothing but honoring a beloved and eminent savant of America.

I thank you for your clear and manly view of the North and South, which I shall show to all our mutual friends. Egerton, who is now here, was delighted to hear of you, as well as Huxley, Lyell, and many others. . .

In a paper just read to the Geological Society Professor Ramsay has made a stronger demand on the powers of ice than you ever did. He imagines that every Swiss lake north and south (Geneva, Neuchatel, Como, etc.) has been scooped out, and the depressions excavated by the abrading action of the glaciers.

FROM SIR PHILIP DE GREY EGERTON.

ALBEMARLE ST., LONDON, March 11, 1862.

MON CHER AGa.s.s,

As I am now settled in London for some months, I take the first opportunity of writing to congratulate you on the distinction which has been conferred upon you by the Royal Society, and I will say that you have most fully earned it. I rejoice exceedingly in the decision the Council have arrived at. I only regret I was not on the Council myself to have advocated your high claims and taken a share in promoting your success. It is now long since I have heard from you, but this terrible disruption between the North and South has, I suppose, rendered the pursuit of science rather difficult, and the necessary funds also difficult of attainment. I should like very much to hear how you are getting on, and whether there is any likelihood of your being able to come over in the course of the summer or autumn. I fully expected you last year, and was very much disappointed that you could not realize your intention. I have this day sent to you through Bailliere, the last decade of the Jermyn St. publications.* (* Publications of the Geological Survey of England.) You will see that Huxley has taken up the subject of the Devonian fishes in a truly scientific spirit. . .

FROM OWEN TO AGa.s.sIZ.

BRITISH MUSEUM, August 30, 1862.

MY DEAR AGa.s.sIZ,

I have received, and since its reception have devoted most of my spare moments to the study of, your fourth volume of the "Natural History of the United States,"--a n.o.ble contribution to our science, and worthy of your great name.

The demonstration of the unity of plan pervading the diversities of the Polyps, Hydroids, Acalephal and Echinodermal modifications of your truly natural group of Radiates, is to my mind perfect, and I trust that the harsh and ugly and essentially error-breeding name of Coelenterata may have received its final sentence of exile from lasting and rational zoological terminology.

I shall avail myself of opportunities for bringing myself to your recollection by such brochures as I have time for. One of them will open to your view something of the nature of the contest here waging to obtain for England a suitable Museum of Natural History, equivalent to her wealth and colonies and maritime business. In this I find you a valuable ally, and have cited from the Reports of your Museum of Comparative Zoology in support of my own claims for s.p.a.ce.

I was glad to hear from Mr. Bates that the Megatherium had not gone to the bottom, but had been rescued, and that it was probably ere this in your Museum at Cambridge. I trust it may be so.

A line from you or the sight of any friend of yours is always cheering to me. Our friends Enniskillen and Egerton are both well. . .

I remain ever truly yours,

RICHARD OWEN.

As has been seen by a previous letter from Sir Roderick Murchison, Aga.s.siz tried from time to time to give his English friends more just views of our national struggle. The letter to which the following is an answer is missing, but one may easily infer its tenor, and the pleasure it had given him.

TO SIR PHILIP DE GREY EGERTON.

NAHANT, Ma.s.sACHUSETTS, August 15, 1862.

. . .I feel so thankful for your words of sympathy, that I lose not an hour in expressing my feeling. It has been agonizing week after week to receive the English papers, and to see there the n.o.ble devotion of the men of the North to their country and its government, branded as the service of mercenaries. You know I am not much inclined to meddle with politics; but I can tell you that I have never seen a more generous and prompt response to the call of country than was exhibited last year, and is exhibiting now, in the loyal United States. In the last six weeks nearly 300,000 men have volunteered, and I am satisfied that the additional 300,000 will be forthcoming without a draft in the course of the next month. And believe me, it is not for the sake of the bounty they come forward, for our best young men are the first to enlist; if anything can be objected to these large numbers of soldiers, it is that it takes away the best material that the land possesses. I thank you once more for your warm sympathy. I needed it the more, as it is almost the first friendly word of that kind I have received from England, and I began to question the humanity of your civilization. . .Under present circ.u.mstances, you can well imagine that I cannot think of leaving Cambridge, even for a few weeks, much as I wish to take some rest, and especially to meet your kind invitation. But I feel that I have a debt to pay to my adopted country, and all I can now do is to contribute my share toward maintaining the scientific activity which has been awakened during the last few years, and which even at this moment is on the increase.

I am now at Nahant, on the sea-sh.o.r.e, studying embryology chiefly with reference to paleontology, and the results are most satisfactory. I have had an opportunity already of tracing the development of the representatives of three different families, upon the embryology of which we had not a single observation thus far, and of making myself familiar with the growth of many others.

With these accessions I propose next winter seriously to return to my first scientific love. . .

I have taken with me to the sea-sh.o.r.e your and Huxley's "Contributions to the Devonian Fishes," and also your notice of Carboniferous fish-fauna; but I have not yet had a chance to study them critically, from want of time, having been too successful with the living specimens to have a moment for the fossils. The season for sea-sh.o.r.e studies is, however, drawing rapidly to an end, and then I shall have more leisure for my old favorites.

I am very sorry to hear such accounts of the sufferings of the manufacturing districts in England. I wish I could foretell the end of our conflict; but I do not believe it can now be ended before slavery is abolished, though I thought differently six months ago.

The most conservative men at the North have gradually come to this conviction, and n.o.body would listen for a moment to a compromise with the southern slave power. Whether we shall get rid of it by war measures or by an emanc.i.p.ation proclamation, I suppose the President himself does not yet know. I do not think that we shall want more money than the people are willing to give. Private contributions for the comfort of the army are really unbounded. I know a gentleman, not among the richest in Boston, who has already contributed over 30,000 dollars; and I heard yesterday of a shop-boy who tendered all his earnings of many years to the relief committee,--2,000 dollars, retaining NOTHING for himself,--and so it goes all round. Of course we have croakers and despondent people, but they no longer dare to raise their voices; from which I infer that there is no stopping the storm until by the natural course of events the atmosphere is clear and pure again.

Ever truly your friend,

LOUIS AGa.s.sIZ.

Aga.s.siz had now his time more at his own disposal since he had given up his school and had completed also the fourth volume of his "Contributions." Leisure time he could never be said to have, but he was free to give all his spare time and strength to the Museum, and to this undivided aim, directly or indirectly, the remainder of his life was devoted. Although at intervals he received generous aid from the Legislature or from private individuals for the further development of the Museum, its growth outran such provision, and especially during the years of the war the problem of meeting expenses was often difficult of solution. To provide for such a contingency Aga.s.siz made in the winter of 1863 the most extensive lecturing tour he had ever undertaken, even in his busiest lecturing days. He visited all the large cities and some of the smaller towns from Buffalo to St. Louis. While very remunerative, and in many respects delightful, since he was received with the greatest cordiality, and lectured everywhere to enthusiastic crowds, this enterprise was, nevertheless, of doubtful economy even for his scientific aims. Aga.s.siz was but fifty-six, yet his fine const.i.tution began to show a fatigue hardly justified by his years, and the state of his health was already a source of serious anxiety to his friends. He returned much exhausted, and pa.s.sed the summer at Nahant, where the climate always benefited him, while his laboratory afforded the best conditions for work. If this summer home had a fault, it was its want of remoteness. He was almost as much beset there, by the interruptions to which a man in his position is liable, as in Cambridge.

His letters show how constantly during this nominal vacation his Museum and its interests occupied his thoughts. One is to his brother-in-law, Thomas G. Cary, whose residence was in San Francisco, and who had been for years his most efficient aid in obtaining collections from the Pacific Coast.

TO MR. THOMAS G. CARY.

CAMBRIDGE, March 23, 1863.

DEAR TOM,

For many years past your aid in fostering the plans of the Museum in Cambridge has greatly facilitated the progress of that establishment in everything relating to the Natural History of California, and now that it has become desirable to extend our scheme to objects which have thus far been neglected I make another appeal to you.

Every day the history of mankind is brought into more and more intimate connection with the natural history of the animal creation, and it is now indispensable that we should organize an extensive collection to ill.u.s.trate the natural history of the uncivilized races. Your personal acquaintance with business friends in almost every part of the globe has suggested to me the propriety of addressing to you a circular letter, setting forth the objects wanted, and requesting of you the favor to communicate it as widely as possible among your friends.

To make the most instructive collections relative to the natural history of mankind, two cla.s.ses of specimens should be brought together, one concerning the habits and pursuits of the races, the other concerning the physical const.i.tution of the races themselves.

With reference to the first it would be desirable to collect articles of clothing and ornaments of all the races of men, their implements, tools, weapons, and such models or drawings of their dwellings as may give an idea of their construction; small canoes and oars as models of their vessels, or indications of their progress in navigation; in one word, everything that relates to their avocations, their pursuits, their habits, their mode of worship, and whatever may indicate the dawn or progress of the arts among them. As to articles of clothing, it would be preferable to select such specimens as have actually been worn or even cast off, rather than new things which may be more or less fanciful and not indicate the real natural condition and habits of a race.

With regard to the collections intended to ill.u.s.trate the physical const.i.tution of the races it is more difficult to obtain instructive specimens, as the savage races are generally inclined to hold sacred all that relates to their dead; yet whenever an opportunity is afforded to obtain skulls of the natives of different parts of the world, it should be industriously improved, and good care taken to mark the skulls in such a way that their origin cannot be mistaken. Beside this, every possible effort should be made to obtain perfect heads, preserved in alcohol, so that all their features may be studied minutely and compared. Where this cannot be done portraits or photographs may be subst.i.tuted.

Trusting that you may help me in this way to bring together in Cambridge a more complete collection, ill.u.s.trative of the natural history of mankind than exists thus far anywhere,* (* All the ethnographical collections of the Museum of Comparative Zoology have now been transferred to the Peabody Museum, where they more properly belong.)

I remain, ever truly your friend and brother,

LOUIS AGa.s.sIZ.