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Chapter 14: 1846-1847: Aet. 39-40.
The course at the Lowell Institute was immediately followed by one upon glaciers, the success of which was guaranteed by private subscription,—an unnecessary security, since the audience, attracted by the novelty and picturesqueness of the subject, as well as by the charm of presentation and fullness of illustration, was large and enthusiastic.
Agassiz was evidently encouraged himself by his success, for toward the close of his Lowell Lectures he writes as follows:—
. . . Beside my lecture course, now within a few days of its conclusion, and the everin-creasing work which grows on my hands in
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proportion as I become familiar with the environs of
Boston, where I shall still remain a few weeks longer, I have so much to do in keeping up my journals, notes, and observations that I have not found a moment to write you since the last steamer. . . . Never did the future look brighter to me than now. If I could for a moment forget that I have a scientific mission to fulfill, to which I will never prove reccreant, I could easily make more than enough by lectures which would be admirably paid and are urged upon me, to put me completely at my ease hereafter.
But I will limit myself to what I need in order to repay those who have helped me through a difficult crisis, and that I can do without even turning aside from my researches.
Beyond that all must go again to science,—there lies my true mission.
I rejoice in what I have been able to do thus far, and I hope that at
Berlin they will be satisfied with the results which I shall submit to competent judges on my return.
If I only have time to finish what I have begun!
You know my plans are not wont to be too closely restricted.
Why do you not write to me?
Am I then wholly forgotten in your pleasant circle while my thoughts are every day constantly with my
Neuchatel friends? . . .
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Midnight, January 1st.
A happy new year to you and to all members of the
Tuesday Club.
Bonjour et bon an. . . .
Some portions of
Agassiz's correspondence with his
European friends and colleagues during the
winter and
summer of 1847 give a clew to the occupations and interests of his new life, and keep up the thread of the old one.
February, 1847.
. . .I write only to thank you for the pleasure your note gave me. When one is far away, as I am, from everything belonging to one's past life, the merest sign of friendly remembrance is a boon.
Do not infer from this that America does not please me. On the contrary, I am delighted with my stay here, although I do not quite understand all that surrounds me; or I should perhaps rather say that many principles which, theoretically, we have been wont to think perfect in themselves, seem in their application to involve results quite contrary to our expecta— tions.
I am constantly asking myself which is better,—our old
Europe, where the man of exceptional gifts can give himself absolutely
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to study, opening thus a wider horizon for the human mind, while at his side thousands barely vegetate in degradation or at least in destitution; or this new world, where the institutions tend to keep all on one level as part of the general mass,—but a mass, be it said, which has no noxious elements.
Yes, the mass here is decidedly good.
All the world lives well, is decently clad, learns something, is awake and interested.
Instruction does not, as in some parts of
Germany for instance, furnish a man with an intellectual tool and then deny him the free use of it. The strength of
America lies in the prodigious number of individuals who think and work at the same time.
It is a severe test of pretentious mediocrity, but I fear it may also efface originality. . . . You are right in believing that one works, or at least that one
can work, better in
Paris than elsewhere, and I should esteem myself happy if I had my nest there, but who will make it for me?
I am myself incapable of making efforts for anything but my work. . . . .
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May 31, 1847.
. . .After six weeks of an illness which has rendered me unfit for serious work I long to be transported into the circle of my
Paris friends, to find myself again among the men whose devotion to science gives them a clear understanding of its tendency and influence.
Therefore I take my way quite naturally to the
Rue Cuvier and mount your stairs, confident that there I shall find this chosen society.
Question upon question greets me regarding this new world, on the shore of which I have but just landed, and yet about which I have so much to say that I fear to tire my listeners.
Naturalist as I am, I cannot but put the people first,—the people who have opened this part of the
American continent to
European civilization.
What a people!
But to understand them you must live among them.
Our education, the principles of our society, the motives of our actions, differ so greatly from what I see here, that I should try in vain to give you an idea of this great nation, passing from childhood to maturity with the faults of spoiled children, and yet with the
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nobility of character and the enthusiasm of youth.
Their look is wholly turned toward the future; their social life is not yet irrevocably bound to exacting antecedents, and thus nothing holds them back, unless, perhaps, a consideration for the opinion in which they may be held in
Europe.
This deference toward
England (unhappily, to them,
Europe means almost exclusively
England) is a curious fact in the life of the
American people.
They know us but little, even after having made a tour in
France, or
Italy, or
Germany.
From
England they receive their literature, and the scientific work of
central Europe reaches them through English channels. . . . Notwithstanding this kind of dependence upon
England, in which American savans have voluntarily placed themselves, I have formed a high opinion of their acquirements, since I have learned to know them better, and I think we should render a real service to them and to science, by freeing them from this tutelage, raising them in their own eyes, and drawing them also a little more toward ourselves.
Do not think that these remarks are prompted by the least antagonism toward English savans, whom no one more than myself has reason to regard with affection and esteem.
But since
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these men are so worthy to soar on their own wings, why not help them to take flight?
They need only confidence, and some special recognition from
Europe would tend to give them this. . . .
Among the zoologists of this country I would place
Mr. Dana at the head.
He is still very young, fertile in ideas, rich in facts, equally able as geologist and mineralogist.
When his work on corals is completed, you can better judge of him. One of these days you will make him a correspondent of the
Institute, unless he kills himself with work too early, or is led away by his tendency to generalization.
Then there is
Gould, author of the malacologic fauna of
Massachusetts, and who is now working up the mollusks of the
Wilkes Expedition.
De Kay and
Lea, whose works have long been known, are rather specialists, I should say. I do not yet know
Holbrook personally.
Pickering, of the
Wilkes Expedition, is a well of science, perhaps the most erudite naturalist here.
Haldeman knows the fresh-water gasteropods of this country admirably well, and has published a work upon them.
Le Conte is a critical entomologist who seems to me thoroughly familiar with what is doing in
Europe.
In connection with
Haldeman
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he is working up the articulates of the
Wilkes Expedition.
Wyman, recently made professor at
Cambridge, is an excellent comparative anatomist, and the author of several papers on the organization of fishes. . . . The botanists are less numerous, but
Asa Gray and
Dr. Torrey are known wherever the study of botany is pursued.
Gray, with his indefatigable zeal, will gain upon his competitors. . . . The geologists and mineralogists form the most numerous class among the savans of the country.
The fact that every state has its corps of official geologists has tended to develop study in this direction to the detriment of other branches, and will later, I fear, tend to the detriment of science itself; for the utilitarian tendency thus impressed on the work of American geologists will retard their progress.
With us, on the contrary, researches of this kind constantly tend to assume a more and more scientific character.
Still, the body of American geologists forms, as a whole, a most respectable contingent.
The names of
Charles T. Jackson, James Hall,
Hitchcock,
Henry and
William Rogers (two brothers), have long been familiar to
European science.
After the geologists, I would mention
Dr. Morton, of
Philadelphia, well known as the author of several
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papers upon fossils, and still better by his great work upon the indigenous races of
America.
He is a man of science in the best sense; admirable both as regards his knowledge and his activity.
He is the pillar of the
Philadelphia Academy.
The chemists and physicists, again, form another utilitarian class of men in this country.
As with many of them purely scientific work is not their sole object, it is difficult for an outsider to distinguish between the clever manipulators and those who have higher aims. .
The mathematicians have also their
culte, dating back to
Bowditch, the translator of the ‘Mecanique celeste,’ and the author of a work on practical navigation.
He died in
Boston, where they are now erecting a magnificent monument to his memory.
Mr. Peirce, professor at
Cambridge, is considered here the equal of our great mathematicians.
It is not for me, who cannot do a sum in addition, to pretend to a judgment in the matter.
1
You are familiar, no doubt, with the works of
Captain Wilkes and the report of his journey
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around the world.
His charts are much praised.
The charts of the coasts and harbors of the
United States, made under the direction of
Dr. Bache and published at government expense, are admirable.
The reports of
Captain Fremont concerning his travels are also most interesting and instructive; to botanists especially so, on account of the scientific notes accompanying them.
I will not speak at length of my own work, —my letter is already too long.
During the winter I have been chiefly occupied in making collections of fishes and birds, and also of the various woods.
The forests here differ greatly from ours in the same latitude.
I have even observed that they resemble astonishingly the forests of the Molasse epoch, and the analogy is heightened by that between the animals of this country and those of the eastern coasts of
Asia as compared with those of the Molasse, such as the chelydras, andreas, etc. I will send a report upon this to
M. Brongniart as soon as I have the time to prepare it. On the erratic phenomena, also, I have made numerous observations, which I am anxious to send to
M. de Beaumont.
These phenomena, so difficult of explanation with us, become still more complicated here,
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both on account of their contact with the sea and of the vast stretches of flat country over which they extend.
For the last few days I have been especially occupied with the development of the medusae.
In studying the actini$e I have made a striking discovery, and I should be glad if you would communicate it to the Academy in advance of the illustrated paper on the same subject, which I hope soon to send you. Notwithstanding their star-like appearance, the star-fishes have, like the sea-urchins, indications by no means doubtful, of a symmetrical disposition of their organs in pairs, and an anterior and posterior extremity easily recognized by the special form of their oral opening.
I have now satisfied myself that the madrepores have something analogous to this in the arrangement of their partitions, so that I am tempted to believe that this tendency to a symmetrical arrangement of parts in pairs, is a general character of polyps, disguised by their radiating form.
Among the medussae something similar exists in the disposition of the marginal appendages and the ocelli.
I attach the more importance to these observations, because they may lead to a clearer perception than we have yet reached
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of the natural relations between the radiates and the other great types of the animal kingdom.
This summer I hope to explore the lower lakes of
Canada, and also the regions lying to the eastward as far as
Nova Scotia; in the autumn I shall resume my excursions on the coast and in
the Alleghanies, and shall pass a part of the winter in the Carolinas.
I will soon write to
Monsieur Brongniart concerning my plans for next year.
If the Museum were desirous to aid me in my undertakings, I should like to make a journey of exploration next summer in a zone thus far completely neglected by naturalists, the region, namely, of the small lakes to the west of
Lake Superior, where the
Mississippi takes its rise, and also of that lying between this great basin of fresh water and the southern arm of
Hudson Bay.
I would employ the autumn in exploring the great valley of the Mississippi, and would pass the winter on the borders of the
Gulf of Mexico.
To carry out such projects, however, I have need of larger resources than I can create by my own efforts, and I shall soon be at the end of the subsidy granted me by the
King of
Prussia.
I shall, however, subordinate all
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these projects to the possibilities of which you kindly tell me. Notwithstanding the interest offered by the exploration of a country so rich as this, notwithstanding the gratifying welcome I have received here, I feel, after all, that nowhere can one work better than in our old
Europe, and the friendship you have shown me is a more than sufficient motive, impelling me to return as soon as possible to
Paris.
Remember me to our common friends.
I have made some sufficiently interesting collections which I shall forward to the Museum; they will show you that I have done my best to fulfill my promises, forgetting no one. . . .
In the summer of 1847
Agassiz established himself in a small house at
East Boston, sufficiently near the sea to be a convenient station for marine collections.
Here certain members of his old working corps assembled about him, and it soon became, like every place he had ever inhabited, a hive of industry.
Chief among his companions were
Count Francois de Pourtales, who had accompanied him to this country;
Mr. E. Desor, who soon followed him to
America; and
Mr. Jaques Burkhardt, who had preceded them all, and
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was now draughtsman in chief to the whole party.
To his labors were soon added those of
Mr. A. Sonrel, the able lithographic artist, who illustrated the most important works subsequently published by
Agassiz.
To an exquisite skill in his art he added a quick, intelligent perception of structural features from the naturalist's point of view, which made his work doubly valuable.
Besides those abovementioned, there were several assistants who shared the scientific work in one department or another.
It must be confessed that this rather original establishment had the aspect of a laboratory rather than a home, domestic comfort being subordinate to scientific convenience.
Every room served in some sort the purposes of an aquarium or a studio, while garret and cellar were devoted to collections.
The rules of the household were sufficiently elastic to suit the most erratic student.
A sliding scale for meals allowed the greatest freedom for excursions along the neighboring shores and beaches, and punctuality in work was the only punctuality demanded.
Agassiz himself was necessarily often absent, for the maintenance of the little colony depended in great degree upon his exertions.
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During the winter of 1847, while continuing his lectures in
Boston and its vicinity, he lectured in other places also.
It is difficult to track his course at this time; but during the winters of 1847 and 1848 he lectured in all the large eastern cities, New York,
Albany,
Philadelphia, and
Charleston, S. C. Everywhere he drew large crowds, and in those days his courses of lectures were rarely allowed to close without some public expression of gratitude and appreciation from the listeners.
Among his papers are preserved several sets of resolutions from medical and scientific societies, from classes of students, and from miscellaneous audiences, attesting the enthusiasm awakened by his instruction.
What he earned in this way enabled him to carry on his work and support his assistants.
Still, the strain upon his strength, combined with all that he was doing beside in purely scientific work, was severe, and before the twelvemonth was out he was seriously ill. At this time
Dr. B. E. Cotting, a physician whose position as curator of the Lowell Institute had brought him into contact with
Agassiz, took him home to his house in the country, where he tended him through some weeks of tedious illness, hastening his convalescence by excursions
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in all the neighboring country, from which they returned laden with specimens,— plants, birds, etc. In this hospitable home he passed his fortieth birthday, the first in this country.
His host found him standing thoughtful and abstracted by the window.
‘Why so sad?’
he asked.
‘That I am so old, and have done so little,’ was the answer.
After a few weeks he was able to return to his work, and the next letter gives some idea of his observations, especially upon the traces of glacial action in the immediate vicinity of
Boston and upon the shores of
Massachusetts Bay.
Indeed, he never lost sight of these features, which had caught his attention the moment he landed on the continent.
In one of his later lectures he gives a striking account of this first impression.
‘In the autumn of 1846,’ he says, ‘six years after my visit to
Great Britain in search of glaciers, 1 sailed for
America.
When the steamer stopped at
Halifax, eager to set foot on the new continent so full of promise for me, I sprang on shore and started at a brisk pace for the heights above the landing.
On the first undisturbed ground, after leaving the town, I was met by the familiar signs, the polished surfaces, the furrows and scratches,
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the
line engraving, so well known in the Old World; and I became convinced of what I had already anticipated as the logical sequence of my previous investigations, that here also this great agent had been at work.’
The incident seems a very natural introduction to the following letter, written a few months later:—
. . .I have waited to write until I should have some facts sufficiently important to claim your attention.
In truth, the study of the marine animals, which I am, for the first time, able to observe in their natural conditions of existence, has engrossed me almost exclusively since I came to the
United States, and only incidentally, as it were, I have turned my attention to paleontology and geology.
I must, however, except the glacial phenomena, a problem, the solution of which always interests me deeply.
This great question, far from presenting itself more simply here, is complicated by peculiarities never brought to my notice in
Europe.
Happily for me,
Mr. Desor, who had been in
Scandinavia before joining me here, called my attention
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at once to certain points of resemblance between the phenomena there and those which I had seen in the neighborhood of
Boston.
Since then, we have made several excursions together, have visited
Niagara, and, in short, have tried to collect all the special facts of glacial phenomena in
America. . . . You are, no doubt, aware that the whole rocky surface of the ground here is polished.
I do not think that anywhere in the world there exist polished and rounded rocks in better preservation or on a larger scale.
Here, as elsewhere, erratic debris are scattered over these surfaces, scratched pebbles impacted in mud, forming unstratified masses mixed with and covered by large erratic boulders, more or less furrowed or scratched, the upper ones being usually angular and without marks.
The absence of moraines, properly so-called, in a country so little broken, is not surprising; I have, however, seen very distinct ones in some valleys of the
White Mountains and in
Vermont.
Up to this time there had been nothing very new in the aspect of the phenomena as a whole; but on examining attentively the internal arrangement of all these materials, especially in the neighborhood of the sea, one
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soon becomes convinced that the ocean has partially covered and more or less remodeled them.
In certain places there are patches of stratified sand interposed between masses of glacial drift-deposit; elsewhere, banks of sand and pebbles crown the irregularities of the glacial deposit, or fill in its depressions; in other localities the glacial pebbles may be washed and completely cleared of mud, retaining, however, their markings; or again, these markings may have disappeared, and the material is arranged in lines or ramparts, as it were, of diverse conformation, in which
Mr. Desor recognized all the modifications of the ‘oesars’ of
Scandinavia.
The disposition of the oesars, as seen here, is evidently due entirely to the action of the waves, and their frequency along the coast is a proof of this.
In a late excursion with
Captain Davis on board a government vessel I learned to understand the mode of formation of the submarine dikes bordering the coast at various distances, which would be oesars were they elevated; with the aid of the dredge I satisfied myself of their identity.
With these facts before me I cannot doubt that the oesars of the
United States consist essentially of glacial material remodeled by the sea; while
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farther inland, though here and there reaching the sea-coast, we have unchanged glacial drift deposit.
At some points the alteration is so slight as to denote only a momentary rise of the sea. Under these circumstances one would naturally look for fossils in the drift, and
M. Desor, in company with
M. de Pourtales, was the first to find them, at
Brooklyn, in
Long Island, which lies to the south of New York.
They were imbedded in a glacial clay deposit, having all the ordinary character of such deposits, with only slight traces of stratified sand.
It is true that the greater number of these fossils (all belonging to species now living on the coast) were broken into angular fragments, not excepting even the thick tests of the
Venus mercenaria. . . .
The suburb of
Boston where I am living (
East Boston) is built on an island, one kilometer and a half long, extending from north to southeast, and varying in width at different points from two to six or seven hundred metres.
Its height above the sea-level is about sixty feet. This little island is composed entirely of glacial muddy deposit, containing scratched pebbles mixed with larger boulders or blocks, and covered also with a considerable number of boulders of divers
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forms and dimensions.
At
East Boston you cannot see what underlies this deposit; but no doubt it rests upon a rounded mass of granite, polished and grooved like several others in
Boston harbor. . . .
In our journey to
Niagara,
Mr. Desor and I assured ourselves that the river deposits, in which, among other things, the mastodon is found with the fresh-water shells of
Goat Island, are posterior to the drift.
It is a fact worth consideration that the mastodons found in
Europe are buried in true tertiary formations, while the great mastodon of the
United States is certainly posterior to the drift. . . . In another letter I will tell you something of my observations upon the geographical distribution of marine animals at different depths and on different bottoms, and also upon the relations between this distribution and that of the fossils in the tertiary deposits.
2 . . .
Although so deeply interested by the geological features of the country,
Agassiz was nevertheless drawn even more strongly to the
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study of the marine animals for which his position on the sea-coast gave him such opportunities as he had never before had. The next letter shows how fully his time was occupied, and how fascinating this new field of observation was to him. The
English is still a little foreign.
He was not yet quite at home in the language which he afterward wrote and spoke with such fluency.
. . . What have you thought of me all this time, not having written a single line neither to you nor to
Professor Silliman after the kind reception I have met with by your whole family?
Pray excuse me and consider, if you please, the difficulty under which I labor, having every day to look after hundreds of new things which always carry me beyond usual hours of working, when I am then so much tired that I can think of nothing.
Nevertheless, it is a delightful life to be allowed to examine in a fresh state so many things of which I had but an imperfect knowledge from books.
The
Boston market supplies me with more than I can examine.
Since I had the pleasure of seeing you I
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have been very successful in collecting specimens, especially in New York and
Albany.
In Washington I have been delighted to see the collections of the
Exploring Expedition.
They entitle you to the highest thanks from all scientific naturalists, and I hope it will be also felt in the same manner by your countrymen at large. . . . I long for the opportunity of studying your fossil shells.
As soon as I have gone over my
Lowell lectures I hope to be able to move.
I shall only pack up what I have already collected; but I cannot yet tell you precisely the time.
I began studying your ‘Zoophytes,’ but it is so rich a book that I proceed slowly.
For years I have not learned so much from a book as from yours.
As I soon saw I would not be able to go through in a short time, I sent a short preliminary report to one of our most widely diffused papers, ‘Preussische Staats Zeitung,’ giving only the general impression of your work, and I shall send to Erichson a fuller scientific report after I have done with the whole volume.
As I happen to have a lithograph of the original specimen of the Homo deluvii testis of Scheuchzer, I will forward it to
Professor Silliman with this letter.
I expect you will
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find it the counterpart of the specimen in your museum; or very nearly in the same state of preservation.
Having just lately received my books, I also inclose a pamphlet from
Ehrenberg, which he desired me to leave with you, and also the books
Professor Silliman has had the kindness to lend me. . . . I have made many observations which I wish to publish, but I can find no time to write them for you now. I must wait till the weather is so dull as to bring nothing into the hands of gunners and fishermen. . . .
So closed his first year in
America.
The second unfolded events both in the home he had left and in the one to which he had unconsciously come, which were to shape his future career, and exert the most powerful influence upon his whole life.
