Elizabeth Cary Agassiz, Louis Agassiz: his life and correspondence, third edition

[334] and completed during the most active period of his glacial investigations. More surprising is it to find him, while pursuing new lines of investigation with passionate enthusiasm, engaged at the same time upon works seemingly so dry and tedious as his ‘Nomenclator Zoologicus,’ and his ‘Bibliographia Zoologiae et Geologiae.’

The former work, a large quarto volume with an Index,¹ comprised an enumeration of all the genera of the animal kingdom, with the etymology of their names, the names of those who had first proposed them, and the date of their publication. He obtained the cooperation of other naturalists, submitting each class as far as possible for revision to the leaders in their respective departments.

In his letter of presentation to the library of the Neuchatel Academy, addressed to M. le Baron de Chambrier, President of the Academic Council, Agassiz thus describes the Nomenclator.

. . .‘Have the kindness to accept for the library of the Academy the fifth number of a work upon the sources of zoological criticism, the publication of which I have just begun. It is a work of patience, demanding ’