“In a little more than an hour he returned and heard my new catalogue. ‘That is good, that is good!’ he repeated; ‘but that is not all; go on;’ and so for three long days he placed that fish before my eyes, forbidding me to look at anything else, or to use any artificial aid. ‘Look, look, look,’ was his repeated injunction.
“This was the best entomological lesson I ever had—a lesson whose influence has extended to the details of every subsequent study; a legacy the Professor has left to me, as he has left it to many others, of inestimable value, which we could not buy, with which we can not part.
“A year afterward, some of us were amusing ourselves with chalking outlandish beasts upon the museum black-board. We drew prancing star-fishes; frogs in mortal combat; hydra-headed worms; stately craw-fishes, standing on their tails, bearing aloft umbrellas; and grotesque fishes with gaping mouths and staring eyes.
“The Professor came in shortly after and was amused as any at our experiments. He looked at the fishes. ‘Hæmulons, every one of them,’ he said; ‘Mr. ⸺ drew them.’
“True; and to this day, if I attempt a fish, I can draw nothing but Hæmulons. The fourth day a second fish of the same group was placed beside the first, and I was bidden to point out the resemblances and differences between the two; another and another followed, until the entire family lay before me, and a whole legion of jars covered the table and surrounding shelves; the odor had become a pleasant perfume; and even now, the sight of an old, six-inch, worm-eaten cork brings fragrant memories!
“The whole group of Hæmulons was thus brought in review; and, whether engaged upon the dissection of the internal organs, the preparation and examination of the bony framework, or the description of the various parts, Agassiz’s training in the method of observing facts and their orderly arrangement, was ever accompanied by the urgent exhortation not to be content with them. ‘Facts are stupid things,’ he would say, ‘until brought into connection with some general law.’
“At the end of eight months it was almost with reluctance that I left these friends and turned to insects; but what I had gained by this outside experience has been of greater value than years of later investigation in my favorite groups.”
In Prof. Agassiz’s opening lecture to the Anderson School at Penikese some notable sayings occur, a few of which are quoted in further illustration of his ideas. “It is a great mistake to suppose that any one can teach the elements of a science. This is indeed the most difficult part of instruction, and it requires the most mature teachers.”
“Not by a superficial familiarity with many things, but by a thorough knowledge of a few things, does any one grow in mental strength and vigor. De Candolle told me that he could teach all he knew with a dozen plants. Unquestionably he could have done it better with so few than with many, certainly for beginners. If a teacher does not require many specimens, so they be well selected, neither should he seek for them far and wide. Let the pupil find in his daily walks the illustrations and repeated evidence of what he has heard in the school room. I think there should be a little museum in every school room, some dozen specimens of radiates, a few hundred shells, a hundred insects with some crustacea and worms, a few fishes, birds and mammalia, enough to characterize every class in the animal kingdom. Pupils should be encouraged to find their own specimens, and taught to handle them. This training is of greater value and wider application than it may seem. Delicacy of manipulation, such as the higher kinds of investigation demand requires the whole organization to be brought into harmony with the mental action. The whole nervous system must be in subordination to the intellectual purpose. Even the pulsation of the arteries must not disturb the steadiness of attitude and gaze of the investigator.”
“The study of Nature is a mental struggle for the mastery of the external world. If we do not consider it in this light we shall hardly succeed in the highest aims of the naturalist. It is truly a struggle of man for an intellectual assimilation of the thought of God.”