11. PORTRAIT BUST OF AGASSIZ BY POWERS AT THE MUSEUM OF COMPARATIVE ZOOLOGY; from a photograph.
12. VIEW OF PENIKESE; from a photograph.
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LOUIS AGASSIZ.
PART 1. IN EUROPE.
CHAPTER 1.
1807-1827: TO AGE 20.
Birthplace.
Influence of his Mother.
Early Love of Natural History.
Boyish Occupations.
Domestic Education.
First School.
Vacations.
Commercial Life renounced.
College of Lausanne.
Choice of Profession.
Medical School of Zurich.
Life and Studies there.
University of Heidelberg.
Studies interrupted by Illness.
Return to Switzerland.
Occupations during Convalescence.
JEAN LOUIS RODOLPHE AGASSIZ was born May 28, 1807, at the village of Motier, on the Lake of Morat. His father, Louis Rodolphe Agassiz, was a clergyman; his mother, Rose Mayor, was the daughter of a physician whose home was at Cudrefin, on the shore of the Lake of Neuchatel.
The parsonages in Switzerland are frequently pretty and picturesque. That of Motier, looking upon the lake and sheltered by a hill which commands a view over the whole chain of the Bernese Alps, was especially so. It possessed a vineyard large enough to add something in good years to the small salary of the pastor; an orchard containing, among other trees, an apricot famed the country around for the unblemished beauty of its abundant fruit; a good vegetable garden, and a delicious spring of water flowing always fresh and pure into a great stone basin behind the house. That stone basin was Agassiz's first aquarium; there he had his first collection of fishes.* (* After his death a touching tribute was paid to his memory by the inhabitants of his birthplace. With appropriate ceremonies, a marble slab was placed above the door of the parsonage of Motier, with this inscription, "J. Louis Agassiz, celebre naturaliste, est ne dans cette maison, le 28 Mai, 1807.")