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

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.