THE FIRST LESSON.
On the first day, the island itself was assigned for a lesson. Questions were suggested to be answered on the following morning. What is the nature of the soil, and what is the geological constitution of this island? What is its position with respect to the points of the compass. Take the main building as your guide, if you have no compass, for that lies east and west. What is the meaning of the curve between the island and the peninsula connected with it? What is the meaning of the loose materials about us, and the huge boulders scattered over the surface? What relation does the island bear to the adjoining islands and to the main land? When the class had again assembled he allowed each to report what he had learned, and taught how by comparison and combination to understand its full significance. He said that an exhaustive answer to each of these questions, individually wrought out, would itself be a good summer’s work. By the observations thus made and subsequently during the summer, it was fully demonstrated that Penikese and the whole range of neighboring Elizabeth islands, twenty miles in length and two or three in width, were a part of a terminal moraine—formed by the great ice sheet which covered the continent during the glacial period as it was gradually receding toward the polar seas.
Prof. Agassiz taught at Penikese partly by lectures, and these lectures, as was his custom, were always extemporaneous. No one who ever heard him need be told that beyond all comparison he was the model scientific talker of the age. Even those who have but read his lectures know what a charm lingers in the sentences which have been transferred to paper. But one must have heard him to realize the secret of his greatest power. The printed lectures carry the brilliant thoughts, the luminous and interesting facts, the flow of apt illustration; but the glow and fervor of his own profound interest in the matter of his speech, “raying out in a countenance that seemed to beam from interior light, and pervade the tones of his sympathetic and singularly expressive voice,” the “palpitating life” of his rapidly-uttered words, and back of all his intense personal magnetism, diffusing itself through the hearts of his charmed audience,—these are things that can not be transferred to paper. Writers in attempting to describe the manner of his eloquence have seemed to exhaust the vocabulary of eulogy.
At Penikese he probably excelled himself. He complimented his school by seeming to believe that he was in the midst of friends, who fully appreciated him, and who were in full sympathy with him. In 1864 it was the good fortune of the writer of this paper to hear him deliver a course of six lectures on the glaciers, before the Lowell Institute, in Boston. They were charming, popular, grand; but at Penikese, on the same subject, he seemed like a different man. All through his summer life there flowed a current of quiet but profound happiness, that lightened his step, glowed in his conversation, shone in his countenance, and gave animation and radiance to his lectures, in a manner he perhaps never before so fully exhibited. This thought was common among the students there assembled. He gave lectures almost every day, embracing full and exhaustive courses upon the glaciers, upon embryology, upon classification, upon methods of instruction, upon systematic zoölogy, upon scientific books and authors. There were also the spontaneous lectures, called out by some casual remark, the exhibition of some new and interesting specimen, or by the prominent presence of some object of natural history, which we might not think of studying at the time. For example, we were regaled one morning with some fish for breakfast. Prof. Agassiz, entering after the rest were seated, noticed the fish. Going immediately to the black-board, which at that time was near and in full view; he said: “Ladies and gentlemen: You are this morning feasting upon a very delicious fish, called the scop. Its scientific name I will write upon the board. It is Pagrus Argyrops—one of the sparoids. This species is not found north of Cape Cod, or at least, very rarely found. Its range is from Cape Cod west and southward. It is not found in the southern waters, only on the shores of Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York and Virginia. The family is not well represented in America. Another species, called ‘sheepshead,’ is found in the South, and there are a few species in the Pacific Ocean. The Mediterranean Sea, however, abounds in species of the family. In all there are two hundred species known, and they are confined to the temperate and tropical regions. They are intensified in the Eastern Atlantic and Mediterranean, as many species being found there as in all the rest of the world.” Then he sat down, and his auditors immediately proceeded to dissect and test the qualities of their specimens, according to natural principles and with intense relish. In the regular morning lecture, after breakfast, an hour in length, he gave a more thorough scientific account of the structure of the scop, detailing its generic and specific characteristics, in a most masterly and fascinating manner, concluding his lecture by instructing in the proper method of describing any fish technically, explaining the symbols used by the most learned in that department of knowledge. On another occasion, while a group were seated engaged in social chat, a single query made as to the possibility of preserving the beautiful colors of star-fish, and other sea animals, drew from him for half an hour a flood of interesting facts concerning the colors of such creatures, their glory, their mysterious and changeful nature, and their evanescence. He deplored the want of knowledge in this direction, and encouraging his pupils to enter that field of investigation as explorers, promised sure results to such as would enter upon it in the truly scientific spirit.