Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence

by Louis Agassiz

ADAM SEDGWICK.

In November, 1870, Agassiz was able to return to Cambridge and the Museum, and even to resume his lectures, which were as vigorous and fresh as ever. So entirely did he seem to have recovered, that in the course of the winter the following proposition was made to him by his friend, Professor Benjamin Peirce, then Superintendent of the Coast Survey.

FROM PROFESSOR PEIRCE.

COAST SURVEY OFFICE, WASHINGTON, February 18, 1871.

. . .I met Sumner in the Senate the day before yesterday, and he expressed immense delight at a letter he had received from Brown-Sequard, telling him that you were altogether free from disease. . .Now, my dear friend, I have a very serious proposition for you. I am going to send a new iron surveying steamer round to California in the course of the summer. She will probably start at the end of June. Would you go in her, and do deep-sea dredging all the way round? If so, what companions will you take? If not, who shall go?. . .

FROM AGASSIZ TO PROFESSOR PEIRCE.

CAMBRIDGE, February 20, 1871.

. . .I am overjoyed at the prospect your letter opens before me. Of course I will go, unless Brown-Sequard orders me positively to stay on terra firma. But even then, I should like to have a hand in arranging the party, as I feel there never was, and is not likely soon again to be, such an opportunity for promoting the cause of science generally, and that of natural history in particular. I would like Pourtales and Alex to be of the party, and both would gladly join if they can. Both are as much interested about it as I am, and I have no doubt between us we may organize a working team, strong enough to do something creditable. It seems to me that the best plan to pursue in the survey would be to select carefully a few points (as many as time would allow) on shore, from which to work at right angles with the coast, to as great a distance as the results would justify, and then move on to some other head-land. If this plan be adopted, it would be desirable to have one additional observer to make collections on shore, to connect with the result of the dredgings. This would be the more important as, with the exception of Brazil, hardly anything is known of the shore faunae upon the greater part of the South American coast. For shore observations I should like a man of the calibre of Dr. Steindachner, who has spent a year on the coast of Senegal, and would thus bring a knowledge of the opposite side of the Atlantic as a starting basis of comparison. . .

After consultation with his physicians, it was decided that Agassiz might safely undertake the voyage in the Hassler, that it might indeed be of benefit to his health. His party of naturalists, as finally made up, consisted of Agassiz himself, Count de Pourtales, Dr. Franz Steindachner, and Mr. Blake, a young student from the Museum, who accompanied Agassiz as assistant and draughtsman. Dr. Thomas Hill, ex-president of Harvard University, was also on the expedition, and though engaged in special investigations of his own, he joined in all the work with genial interest. The vessel was commanded by Captain (now Commodore) Philip C. Johnson, whose courtesy and kindness made the Hassler a floating home to the guests on board. So earnest and active was the sympathy felt by him and his officers in the scientific interests of the expedition, that they might be counted as a valuable additional volunteer corps. Among them should be counted Dr. William White, of Philadelphia, who accompanied the expedition in a partly professional, partly scientific capacity.

The hopes Agassiz had formed of this expedition, as high as those of any young explorer, were only partially fulfilled. His enthusiasm, though it had the ardor of youth, had none of its vagueness. In a letter to Mr. Peirce, published in the Museum Bulletin at this time, there is this passage: "If this world of ours is the work of intelligence and not merely the product of force and matter, the human mind, as a part of the whole, should so chime with it, that from what is known it may reach the unknown. If this be so, the knowledge gathered should, within the limits of error which its imperfection renders unavoidable, enable us to foretell what we are likely to find in the deepest abysses of the sea." He looked, in short, for the solution of special problems directly connected with all his previous work. He believed the deeper sea would show forms of life akin to animals of earlier geological times, throwing new light on the relation between the fossil and the living world. In the letter above quoted, he even named the species he expected to find most prevalent in those greater depths: as, for instance, representatives of the older forms of Ganoids and Selachians; Cephalopods, resembling the more ancient chambered shells; Gasteropods, recalling the tertiary and cretaceous types; and Acephala, resembling those of the jurassic and cretaceous formations. He expected to find Crustaceans also, more nearly approaching the ancient Trilobites than those now living on the surface of the globe; and among Radiates he looked for the older forms of sea-urchins, star-fishes, and corals. Although the collections brought together on this cruise were rich and interesting, they gave but imperfect answers to these comprehensive questions. Owing to defects in the dredging apparatus, the hauls from the greatest depths were lost.