RESOLVED, That the thanks of this great assembly of delighted hearers be given to the illustrious Professor Agassiz, for the fullness of his instruction, for the clearness of his method of illustration, for his exposition of the idea as antecedent to form; of the superiority of the undying, original, and eternal force over its transient manifestations; for happy hours which passed too rapidly away; for genial influences of which the memory will last through our lives.
All his leisure hours during the winter of 1867 were given to the review and arrangement of the great collections he had brought home.
TO SIR PHILIP DE GREY EGERTON.
MUSEUM OF COMPARATIVE ZOOLOGY, CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS., March 26, 1867.
I know you will be pleased to hear that I have returned to the study of fishes, and that I am not likely to give it up again for years to come. My success in collecting in the Amazons has been so unexpected that it will take me years to give an account of what I have found, and I am bound to show that the strange statements that have gone abroad are strictly correct. Yes, I have about eighteen hundred new species of fishes from the basin of the Amazons! The collection is now in Cambridge, for the most part in good preservation. It suggests at once the idea that either the other rivers of the world have been very indifferently explored, or that tropical America nourishes a variety of animals unknown to other regions. In this dilemma it would be worth while to send some naturalist to investigate the Ganges or the Bramaputra, or some of the great Chinese rivers. Can it not be done by order of the British government?
Please send me whatever you may publish upon the fossil fishes in your possession. I frequently sigh for another session in your museum, and it is not improbable that I shall solicit an invitation from you in a few years, in order to revise my views of the whole subject in connection with what I am now learning of the living fishes. By the way, I have eleven hundred colored drawings of the species of Brazil made from life by my old friend Burkhardt, who accompanied me on this journey.
My recent studies have made me more adverse than ever to the new scientific doctrines which are flourishing now in England. This sensational zeal reminds me of what I experienced as a young man in Germany, when the physio-philosophy of Oken had invaded every centre of scientific activity; and yet, what is there left of it? I trust to outlive this mania also. As usual, I do not ask beforehand what you think of it, and I may have put my hand into a hornet's nest; but you know your old friend Agass, and will forgive him if he hits a tender spot. . .
The summer of 1867 was passed very tranquilly at his Nahant laboratory, in that quiet work with his specimens and his microscope which pleased him best. The following letter to Professor Benjamin Peirce, who was then Superintendent of the Coast Survey, shows, however, his unfailing interest in the bearing of scientific researches on questions of public utility.
TO PROFESSOR PEIRCE, SUPERINTENDENT OF THE COAST SURVEY.
NAHANT, September 11, 1867.