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Chapter 16: 1850-1852: Aet. 43-45.
The following letter from the
Superintendent of the Coast Survey determined for
Agassiz the chief events of the winter of 1851.
my dear friend,—Would it be possible for you to devote six weeks or two months to the examination of the
Florida reefs and keys in connection with their survey?
It is extremely important to ascertain what they are and how formed.
One account treats them as growing corals, another as masses of something resembling oolite, piled together, barrier-wise.
You see that this lies at the root of the progress of the reef, so important to
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navigation, of the use to be made of it in placing our signals, of the use as a foundation for light-houses, and of many other questions practically important and of high scientific interest.
I would place a vessel at your disposal during the time you were on the reef, say six weeks.
The changes at or near
Cape Florida, from the
Atlantic coast and its silicious sand, to the
Florida coast and its coral sand, must be curious.
You will be free to move from one end of the reef to the other, which will be, say one hundred and fifty miles. Motion to eastward would be slow in the windy season, though favored by the
Gulf Stream as the winds are ‘trade.’
Whatever collections you might make would be your own. I would only ask for the survey such information and such specimens as would be valuable to its operations, especially to its hydrography, and some report on these matters.
As this will, if your time and engagements permit, lead to a business arrangement, I must, though reluctantly, enter into that.
I will put aside six hundred dollars for the two months, leaving you to pay your own expenses; or, if you prefer it, will pay all expenses of travel, including subsistence, to and from
Key West,
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and furnish vessel and subsistence while there, and four hundred dollars.
What results would flow to science from your visit to that region!
You have spoken of the advantage of using our vessels when they were engaged in their own work.
Now I offer you a vessel the motions of which you will control, and the assistance of the officers and crew of which you will have.
You shall be at no expense for going and coming, or while there, and shall choose your own time. . . .
Agassiz accepted this proposal with delight, and at once made arrangements to take with him a draughtsman and an assistant, in order to give the expedition such a character as would make it useful to science in general, as well as to the special objects of the Coast Survey.
It will be seen that
Dr. Bache gladly concurred in all these views.
my dear friend,—On the basis of our former communications I have been, as the time served, raising a superstructure.
I have arranged with
Lieutenant Commander Alden
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to send the schooner
W. A. Graham, belonging to the Coast Survey, under charge of an officer who will take an interest in promoting the great objects in which you will be engaged, to
Key West, in time to meet you on your arrival in the
Isabel of the 15th, from
Charleston to
Key West.
The vessel will be placed at your absolute disposal for four to six weeks, as you may find desirable, doing just such things as you require, and going to such places as you direct.
If you desire more than a general direction, I will give any specific ones which you may suggest. . . .
I have requested that room be made in the cabin for you and for two aids, as you desire to take a draughtsman with you; and in reference to your enlarged plan of operating, of which I see the advantage, I have examined the financial question, and propose to add two hundred dollars to the six hundred in my letter of October 30th, to enable you to execute it. I would suggest that you stop a day in
Washington on your way to
Charleston, to pick up the topographical and geographical information which you desire, and to have all matters of a formal kind arranged to suit your convenience and wishes, which, I am sure, will all be promotive of the objects in
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view from your visit to
Florida. . . . You say I shall smile
at your plans,—instead of which, they have been smiled
on; now, there is a point for you,—a true
Saxon distinction.
If you succeed (and did you ever fail!?) in developing for our Coast Survey the nature, structure, growth, and all that, of the
Florida reefs, you will have conferred upon the country a priceless favor. . . .
The Superintendent of the Coast Survey never had cause to regret the carte-blanche he had thus given.
A few weeks, with the facilities so liberally afforded, gave
Agassiz a clew to all the phenomena he had been commissioned to examine, and enabled him to explain the relation between the keys and the outer and inner reefs, and the mud swamps, or more open channels, dividing them, and to connect these again with the hummocks and everglades of the main-land.
It remains to be seen whether his theory will hold good, that the whole or the greater part of the
Florida peninsula has, like its southern portion, been built up of concentric reefs.
But his explanation of the present reefs, their structure, laws of growth, relations to each other and to the main-land, as well as to the
Gulf
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Stream and its prevailing currents, was of great practical service to the Coast Survey.
It was especially valuable in determining how far the soil now building up from accumulations of mud and coral debris was likely to remain for a long time shifting and uncertain, and how far and in what localities it might be relied upon as affording a stable foundation.
When, at the meeting of the American Association in the following spring,
Agassiz gave an account of his late exploration,
Dr. Bache, who was present, said that for the first time he understood the bearing of the whole subject, though he had so long been trying to unravel it.
The following letter was written immediately after
Agassiz's return.
. . .I have spent a large part of the winter in
Florida, with a view of studying the coral reefs.
I have found that they constitute a new class of reefs, distinct from those described by
Darwin and
Dana under the name of fringing reefs, barrier reefs, and atolls.
I have lately read a paper upon that subject before the American Academy, which
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I shall send you as soon as it is printed.
The case is this.
There are several concentric reefs separated by deep channels; the peninsula of
Florida itself is a succession of such reefs, the everglades being the filled — up channels, while the hummocks were formerly little intervening islands, like the mangrove islands in the present channels.
But what is quite remarkable, all these concentric reefs are upon one level, above that of the sea, and there is no indication whatever of upheaval.
You will find some observations upon upheavals, etc., in
Silliman, by
Tuomey; it is a great mistake, as I shall show.
The
Tortugas are a real atoll, but formed without the remotest indication of subsidence.
Of course this does not interfere in the least with the views of
Darwin, for the whole ground presents peculiar features.
I wish you would tell him something about this.
One of the most remarkable peculiarities of the rocks in the reefs of the Tortugas consists in their composition; they are chiefly made up of
Corallines, limestone algae, and, to a small extent only, of real corals. . . . .
Agassiz's report to the Coast Survey upon the results of this first investigation made by
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him upon the reefs of
Florida was not published in full at the time.
The parts practically most important to the Coast Survey were incorporated in their subsequent charts; the more general scientific results, as touching the physical history of the peninsula as a whole, appeared in various forms, were embodied in
Agassiz's lectures, and were printed some years after in his volume entitled ‘Methods of Study.’
The original report, with all the plates prepared for it, was published in the ‘Memoirs of the Museum of Comparative Zoology,’ under the supervision of
Alexander Agassiz, after the death of his father.
It forms a quarto volume, containing some sixty pages of text, with twenty-two plates, illustrative of corals and coral structure, and a map of
Southern Florida with its reefs and keys.
This expedition was also of great importance to
Agassiz's collections, and to the embryo museum in
Cambridge.
It laid the foundation of a very complete collection of corals of all varieties and in all stages of growth.
All the specimens, from huge coral heads and branching fans down to the most minute single corals, were given up to him, the value of the whole being greatly enhanced by the drawings taken on the spot from the living animals.
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To this period belongs also the following fragment of a letter to
Humboldt.
[Probably 1852,—date not given.]
. . . What a time has passed since my last letter!
Had you not been constantly in my thoughts, and your counsels always before me as my guide, I should reproach myself for my silence.
I hope my two papers on the medusae, forwarded this year, have reached you, and also one upon the classification of insects, as based upon their development.
I have devoted myself especially to the organization of the invertebrate animals, and to the facts bearing upon the perfecting of their classification.
I have succeeded in tracing the same identity of structure between the three classes of radiates, and also between those of mollusks, as has already been recognized in the vertebrates, and partially in the articulates.
It is truly a pleasure for me now to be able to demonstrate in my lectures the insensible gradations existing between polyps, medusae, and echinoderms, and to designate by the same name organs seemingly so different.
Especially has the minute examination of the thickness of the test in echinoderms revealed
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to me unexpected relations between the sea-urchin and the medusa.
No one suspects, I fancy, at this moment, that the solid envelope of the Scutellae and the Clypeasters is traversed by a net-work of radiating tubes, corresponding to those of the medusae, so well presented by
Ehrenberg in
Aurelia aurita.
If the Berlin zoologists will take the trouble to file off the surface of the test of an Echinarachnius parma, they will find a circular canal as large and as continuous as that of the medusae.
The aquiferous tubes specified above open into this canal.
But the same thing may be found under various modifications in other genera of the family.
Since I have succeeded in injecting colored liquid into the beroids, for instance, and keeping them alive with it circulating in their transparent mass, I am able to show the identity of their zones of locomotive fringes (combs), from which they take their name of Ctenophorae, with the ambulacral (locomotive) apparatus of the echinoderms.
Furnished with these facts, it is not difficult to recognize true beroidal forms in the embryos of sea-urchins and star-fishes, published by
Muller in his beautiful plates, and thus to trace the medusoid origin of the echinoderms, as the polypoid origin of the
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medusae has already been recognized.
I do not here allude to their primitive origin, but simply to the general fact that among radiates the embryos of the higher classes represent, in miniature, types of the lower classes, as, for instance, those of the echinoderms resemble the medusae, those of the medusa the polyps.
Having passed the greater part of last winter in
Florida, where I was especially occupied in studying the coral reefs, I had the best opportunity in the world for prosecuting my embryological researches upon the stony corals.
I detected relations among them which now enable me to determine the classification of these animals according to their mode of development with greater completeness than ever before, and even to assign a superior or inferior rank to their different types, agreeing with their geological succession, as I have already done for the fishes.
I am on the road to the same results for the mollusks and the articulates, and can even now say in general terms, that the most ancient representatives of all the families belonging to these great groups, strikingly recall the first phases in the embryonic development of their successors in more recent formations, and even that the embryos of comparatively recent
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families recall families belonging to ancient epochs.
You will find some allusion to these results in my Lectures on Embryology, given in my ‘
Lake Superior,’ of which I have twice sent you a copy, that it might reach you the more surely; but these first impressions have assumed greater coherence now, and I constantly find myself recurring to my fossils for light upon the embryonic forms I am studying and
vice versa, consulting my embryological drawings in order to decipher the fossils with greater certainty.
The proximity of the sea and the ease with which I can visit any part of the coast within a range of some twenty degrees give me inexhaustible resources for the whole year, which, as time goes on, I turn more and more to the best account.
On the other hand, the abundance and admirable state of preservation of the fossils found in our ancient deposits, as well as the regular succession of the beds containing them, contribute admirable material for this kind of comparative study. . .
In the summer of 1851
Agassiz was invited to a professorship at the Medical College in
Charleston, S. C. This was especially acceptable
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to him, because it substituted a regular course of instruction to students, for the disconnected lectures given to miscellaneous audiences, in various parts of the country, by which he was obliged to eke out his small salary and provide for his scientific expenses.
While more fatiguing than class-room work, these scattered lectures had a less educational value, though, on the other hand, they awakened a very wide-spread interest in the study of nature.
The strain of constant traveling for this purpose, the more harassing because so unfavorable to his habits of continuous work, had already told severely upon his health; and from this point of view also the new professorship was attractive, as promising a more quiet, though no less occupied, life.
The lectures were to be given during the three winter months, thus occupying the interval between his
autumn and
spring courses at
Cambridge.
He assumed his new duties at
Charleston in December, 1851, and by the kindness of his friend
Mrs. Rutledge, who offered him the use of her cottage for the purpose, he soon established a laboratory on
Sullivan's Island, where the two or three assistants he had brought with him could work conveniently.
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The cottage stood within hearing of the wash of the waves, at the head of the long, hard sand beach which fringed the island shore for some three or four miles. There could hardly be a more favorable position for a naturalist, and there, in the midst of their specimens,
Agassiz and his band of workers might constantly be found.
His studies here were of the greater interest to him because they connected themselves with his previous researches, not only upon the fishes, but also upon the lower marine animals of the coast of
New England and of the
Florida reefs; so that he had now a basis for comparison of the fauna scattered along the whole Atlantic coast of the
United States.
The following letter gives some idea of his work at this time.
my dear friend,—You should at least know that I think of you often on these shores.
And how could I do otherwise when I daily find new small crustacea, which remind me of the important work you are now preparing on that subject.
Of course, of the larger ones there is nothing to be found after
Professor Gibbes has gone
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over the ground, but among the lower orders there are a great many in store for a microscopic observer.
I have only to regret that I cannot apply myself more steadily.
I find my nervous system so over-excited that any continuous exertion makes me feverish.
So I go about as much as the weather allows, and gather materials for better times.
Several interesting medusae have been already observed; among others, the entire metamorphosis and alternate generation of a new species of my genus tiaropsis.
You will be pleased to know that here, as well as at the
North, tiaropsis is the medusa of a campanularia.
Mr. Clark, one of my assistants, has made very good drawings of all its stages of growth, and of various other hydroid medusae peculiar to this coast.
Mr. Stimpson, another very promising young naturalist, who has been connected with me for some time in the same capacity, draws the crustacea and bryozoa, of which there are also a good many new ones here.
My son and my old friend
Burkhardt are also with me (upon
Sullivan's Island), and they look after the larger species, so that I shall probably have greatly increased my information upon the fauna of the
Atlantic coast by the time I return to
Cambridge.
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In town, where I go three times a week to deliver lectures at the Medical College (beside a course just now in the evening also before a mixed audience), I have the rest of my family, so that nothing would be wanting to my happiness if my health were only better. . . . What a pity that a man cannot work as much as he would like; or at least accomplish what he aims at. But no doubt it is best it should be so; there is no harm in being compelled by natural necessities to limit our ambition,—on the contrary, the better sides of our nature are thus not allowed to go to sleep.
However, I cannot but regret that I am unable at this time to trace more extensively subjects for which I should have ample opportunities here, as for instance the anatomy of the echinoderms, and also the embryology of the lower animals in general. . . .
This winter, notwithstanding the limitations imposed upon his work by the state of his health, was a very happy one to
Agassiz.
As mentioned in the above letter his wife and daughters had accompanied him to
Charleston, and were established there in lodgings.
Their holidays and occasional vacations were passed at the house of
Dr. John E. Holbrook
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(the ‘Hollow Tree’), an exquisitely pretty and picturesque country place in the neighborhood of
Charleston.
Here
Agassiz had been received almost as one of the family on his first visit to
Charleston, shortly after his arrival in the
United States.
Dr. Holbrook's name, as the author of the ‘Herpetology of
South Carolina,’ had long been familiar to him, and he now found a congenial and affectionate friend in the colleague and fellow-worker, whose personal acquaintance he had been anxious to make.
Dr. Holbrook's wife, a direct descendant of
John Rutledge of our revolutionary history, not only shared her husband's intellectual life, but had herself rare mental qualities, which had been developed by an unusually complete and efficient education.
The wide and various range of her reading, the accuracy of her knowledge in matters of history and literature, and the charm of her conversation, made her a delightful companion.
She exercised the most beneficent influence upon her large circle of young people, and without any effort to attract, she drew to herself whatever was most bright and clever in the society about her. The ‘Hollow Tree,’ presided over by its hospitable host and hostess was, therefore,
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the centre of a stimulating and cultivated social intercourse, free from all
gene or formality.
Here
Agassiz and his family spent many happy days during their southern sojourn of 1852.
The woods were yellow with jessamine, and the low, deep piazza was shut in by vines and roses; the open windows and the soft air full of sweet, out-of-door fragrance made one forget, spite of the wood fire on the hearth, that it was winter by the calendar.
The days, passed almost wholly in the woods or on the veranda, closed with evenings spent not infrequently in discussions upon the scientific ideas and theories of the day, carried often beyond the region of demonstrated facts into that of speculative thought.
An ever-recurring topic was that of the origin of the human race.
It was
Agassiz's declared belief that man had sprung not from a common stock, but from various centres, and that the original circumscription of these primordial groups of the human family corresponded in a large and general way with the distribution of animals and their combination into faunae.
1 His special zoological studies were too engrossing
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to allow him to follow this line of investigation closely, but it was never absent from his view of the animal kingdom as a whole.
He valued extremely
Mrs. Holbrook's thoughtful sympathy, and as the following letter connects itself with the winter evening talks by the ‘Hollow Tree’ fireside, and was suggested by them, it may be given here, though in date it is a little in advance of the present chapter.
. . . I am again working at the human races, and have opened another line of investigation in that direction.
The method followed by former investigators does not seem to me to have been altogether the best, since there is so little agreement between them.
The difficulty has, no doubt, arisen on one side from the circumstance that the inquirer sought for evidence of the unity of all races, expecting the result to agree with the prevailing interpretation of Genesis; and on the other from too zoological a point of view in weighing the differences observed.
Again, both have almost set aside all evidence not directly derived from the examination of the
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races themselves.
It has occurred to me that as a preliminary inquiry we ought to consider the propriety of applying to man the same rules as to animals, examining the limits within which they obtain, and paying due attention to all circumstances bearing upon the differences observed among men, from whatever quarter in the study of nature they may be gathered.
What do the monkeys say to this?
or, rather, what have they to tell in reference to it?
There are among them as great, and, indeed, even greater, differences than among men, for they are acknowledged to constitute different genera, and are referred to many, indeed to more than a hundred, species; but they are the nearest approach to the human family, and we may at least derive some hints from them.
How much mixture there is among these species, if any, is not at all ascertained; indeed, we have not the least information respecting their intercourse; but one point is certain,—zoologists agree as little among themselves respecting the limits of these species as they do respecting the affinities of the races of men. What some consider as distinct species, others consider as mere varieties, and these varieties or species differ in particulars neither more constant nor more
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important than those which distinguish the human races.
The fact that they are arranged in different genera, species, and varieties does not lessen the value of the comparison; for the point in question is just to know whether nations, races, and what have also been called families of men, such as the Indo-Germanic, the Semitic, etc., do not in reality correspond to the families, genera, and species of monkeys.
Now the first great subdivisions among the true monkeys (excluding Makis and Arctopitheci) are founded upon the form of the nose, those of the new world having a broad partition between the nostrils, while those of the old world have it narrow.
How curious that this fact, which has been known to naturalists for half a century, as presenting a leading feature among monkeys, should have been overlooked in man, when, in reality, the negroes and Australians differ in precisely the same manner from the other races; they having a broad partition, and nostrils opening sideways, like the monkeys of
South America, while the other types of the human family have a narrow partition and nostrils opening downward, like the monkeys of
Asia and
Africa.
Again, the minor differences, such as the obliquity of the anterior
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teeth, the thickness of the lips, the projection of the cheek-bones, the position of the eyes, the characteristic hair, or wool, afford as constant differences as those by which the chimpanzees, orangs, and gibbons are separated into distinct genera; and their respective species differ no more than do the Greeks, Germans, and Arabs,—or the Chinese, Tartars, and Finns,—or the New Zealanders and Malays, which are respectively referred to the same race.
The truth is, that the different
species admitted by some among the orangs are in reality
races among monkeys, or else the races among men are nothing more than what are called species among certain monkeys. . . . Listen for a moment to the following facts, and when you read this place a map of the world before you. Upon a narrow strip of land along the
Gulf of Guinea, from Cape Palmas to the Gaboon, live two so—called species of chimpanzee; upon the islands of
Sumatra and
Borneo live three or four orangs; upon the shores of the Gulf of Bengal, including the neighborhood of
Calcutta,
Burmah,
Malacca,
Sumatra,
Borneo, and
Java together, ten or eleven species of gibbons, all of which are the nearest relatives to the human family, some being as large as
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certain races of men; altogether, fifteen species of anthropoid monkeys playing their part in the animal population of the world upon an area not equaling by any means the surface of
Europe.
Some of these species are limited to
Borneo, others to
Sumatra, others to
Java alone, others to the peninsula of
Malacca; that is to say to tracts of land similar in extent to
Spain,
France,
Italy, and even to
Ireland; distinct animals, considered by most naturalists as distinct species, approaching man most closely in structural eminence and size, limited to areas not larger than
Spain or
Italy.
Why, then, should not the primitive theatre of a nation of men have been circumscribed within similar boundaries, and from the beginning have been as independent as the chimpanzee of
Guinea, or the orangs of
Borneo and
Sumatra?
Of course, the superior powers of man have enabled him to undertake migrations, but how limited are these, and how slight the traces they have left behind them. . . . Unfortunately for natural history, history so-called has recorded more faithfully the doings of handfuls of adventurers than the real history of the primitive nations with whom the migrating tribes came into contact.
But I hope it will yet be possible
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to dive under these waves of migration, to remove, as it were, the trace of their passage, and to read the true history of the past inhabitants of the different parts of the world, when it will be found, if all analogies are not deceptive, that every country equaling in extent those within the limits of which distinct nationalities are known to have played their part in history, has had its distinct aborigines, the character of which it is now the duty of naturalists to restore, if it be not too late, in the same manner as paleontologists restore fossil remains.
I have already made some attempts, by studying ancient geography, and I hope the task may yet be accomplished.
Look, for instance, at
Spain.
The
Iberians are known as the first inhabitants, never extending much beyond the
Pyrenees to the
Garonne, and along the gulfs of
Lyons and
Genoa.
As early as during the period of Phoenician prosperity they raised wool from their native sheep, derived from the Mouflon, still found wild in
Spain,
Corsica, and
Sardinia; they had a peculiar breed of horses, to this day differing from all other horses in the world.
Is this not better evidence of their independent origin, than is the fancied lineage with the Indo-Germanic family of their
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Oriental descent?
For we must not forget, in connection with this, that the Basque language was once the language of all
Spain, that which the Iberian spoke, and which has no direct relation to Sanskrit.
I have alluded but slightly to the negro race, and not at all to the Indians.
I would only add with reference to these that I begin to perceive the possibility of distinguishing different centres of growth in these two continents.
If we leave out of consideration fancied migrations, what connection can be traced, for instance, between the Eskimos, along the whole northern districts of this continent, and the Indians of the
United States, those of
Mexico, those of
Peru, and those of
Brazil?
Is there any real connection between the coast tribes of the northwest coast, the mound builders, the
Aztec civilization, the Inca, and the Gueranis?
It seems to me no more than between the
Assyrian and
Egyptian civilization.
And as to negroes, there is, perhaps, a still greater difference between those of
Senegal, of
Guinea, and the Caffres and Hottentots, when compared with the Gallahs and Mandingoes.
But where is the time to be taken for the necessary investigations involved in these inquiries?
Pray write to
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me soon what you say to all this, and believe me always your true friend,
In the spring of 1852, while still in
Charleston,
Agassiz heard that the
Prix Cuvier, now given for the first time, was awarded to him for the ‘Poissons Fossiles.’
This gratified him the more because the work had been so directly bequeathed to him by
Cuvier himself.
To his mother, through whom he received the news in advance of the official papers, it also gave great pleasure.
‘Your fossil fishes,’ she says, ‘which have cost you so much anxiety, so much toil, so many sacrifices, have now been estimated at their true value by the most eminent judges. . . . This has given me such happiness, dear Louis, that the tears are in my eyes as I write it to you.’
She had followed the difficulties of his task too closely not to share also its success.
