HOW AGASSIZ TAUGHT PROFESSOR SCUDDER
[Footnote: 'In the Laboratory with Agassiz,' by Samuel H. Scudder, from Every Saturday (April 4, 1874) 16, 369-370.]
It was more than fifteen years ago [from 1874] that I entered the laboratory of Professor Agassiz, and told him I had enrolled my name in the Scientific School as a student of natural history. He asked me a few questions about my object in coming, my antecedents generally, the mode in which I afterwards proposed to use the knowledge I might acquire, and, finally, whether I wished to study any special branch. To the latter I replied that, while I wished to be well grounded in all departments of zoology, I purposed to devote myself specially to insects.
'When do you wish to begin?' he asked.
'Now,' I replied.
This seemed to please him, and with an energetic 'Very well!' he reached from a shelf a huge jar of specimens in yellow alcohol.
'Take this fish,' said he, 'and look at it; we call it a haemulon; by and by I will ask what you have seen.'
With that he left me, but in a moment returned with explicit instructions as to the care of the object entrusted to me.
'No man is fit to be a naturalist,' said he, 'who does not know how to take care of specimens.'
I was to keep the fish before me in a tin tray, and occasionally moisten the surface with alcohol from the jar, always taking care to replace the stopper tightly. Those were not the days of ground-glass stoppers and elegantly shaped exhibition jars; all the old students will recall the huge neckless glass bottles with their leaky, wax -besmeared corks, half eaten by insects, and begrimed with cellar dust. Entomology was a cleaner science than ichthyology, but the example of the Professor, who had unhesitatingly plunged to the bottom of the jar to produce the fish, was infectious; and though this alcohol had 'a very ancient and fishlike smell,' I really dared not show any aversion within these sacred precincts, and treated the alcohol as though it were pure water. Still I was conscious of a passing feeling of disappointment, for gazing at a fish did not commend itself to an ardent entomologist. My friends at home, too, were annoyed, when they discovered that no amount of eau-de-Cologne would drown the perfume which haunted me like a shadow.