In the succeeding volume (2, 440, 1846) occurs the record of Agassiz’s arrival. “We learn with pleasure that he will spend several years among us, in order thoroughly to understand our natural history.”
Immediately on reaching Boston, Agassiz began the publication of articles on our fauna, and the following year he was appointed to a professorship at Harvard. The Journal says (4, 449, 1847): “Every scientific man in America will be rejoiced to hear so unexpected a piece of good news.” The next year the Journal (5, 139, 1848) records Agassiz’s lecture courses at New York and Charleston, his popularity with all classes of the people and the gift of a silver case containing $250 in half eagles from the students of the College of Physicians and Surgeons.
The service of Agassiz to American zoology, therefore, consisted not only in the publication of the results of his researches and his philosophical considerations therefrom, but also, and perhaps in even greater degree, in the popularization of science. In the latter direction were his inspiring lectures before popular audiences and the early publication of a zoological text-book. This book, published in 1848, was entitled “Principles of Zoology, touching the Structure, Development, Distribution and Natural arrangement of the races of Animals, living and extinct, with numerous illustrations.” It was written with the cooperation of Augustus A. Gould. The review of this book in the Journal (6, 151, 1848) indicates clearly the broad modern principles underlying the new era which was beginning for American zoology.
“A work emanating from so high a source as the Principles of Zoology, hardly requires commendation to give it currency. The public have become acquainted with the eminent abilities of Prof. Agassiz through his lectures, and are aware of his vast learning, wide reach of mind, and popular mode of illustrating scientific subjects ... The volume is prepared for the student in zoological science; it is simple and elementary in style, full in its illustrations, comprehensive in its range, yet well considered and brought into the narrow compass requisite for the purpose intended.”
The titles of its chapters will show how little it differs in general subject matter from the most recent text-book in biology. Chapter I, The Sphere and fundamental principles of Zoology; II, General Properties of Organized Bodies; III, Organs and Functions of Animal Life; IV, Of Intelligence and Instinct; V, Of Motion (apparatus and modes); VI, Of Nutrition; VII, Of the Blood and Circulation; VIII, Of Respiration; IX, Of the Secretions; X, Embryology (Egg and its Development); XI, Peculiar Modes of Reproduction; XII, Metamorphoses of Animals; XIII, Geographical Distribution of Animals; XIV, Geological Succession of Animals, or their Distribution in Time.
A moment’s consideration of the fact that all these topics are excellently treated will show how great had been the progress of zoology in the first half of the nineteenth century. The sixty years that have elapsed since the publication of this book have served principally to develop these separate lines of biology into special fields of science without reorganization of the essential principles here recognized. This remained for many years the standard zoological and physiological text-book, and was republished in several editions here and in England. Another popular book is entitled “Methods of Study in Natural History” (1864).
More than 400 books and papers were written by Agassiz, over a third of which were published before he came to America. They cover both zoological and geological topics, including systematic papers on living and fossil groups of animals, but most important of all are his philosophical essays on the general principles of biology.
One of Agassiz’s greatest services to zoology was the publication of his “Bibliographia Zoologiæ et Geologiæ” by the Ray Society, beginning with 1848. The publication of the Lowell lectures in Comparative Embryology in 1849 gave wide audience to the general principles now recognized in the biogenetic law of ancestral reminiscence. As stated in the Journal (8, 157, 1849), the “object of the Lectures is to demonstrate that a natural method of classifying the animal kingdom may be attained by a comparison of the changes which are passed through by different animals in the course of their development from the egg to the perfect state; the change they undergo being considered as a scale to appreciate the relative position of the species.” These “principles of classification” are fully elucidated in a separate pamphlet, and are discussed at length in the Journal (11, 122, 1851).
One of the most interesting of Agassiz’s numerous philosophical essays, originally contributed to the Journal (9, 369, 1850), discusses the “Natural Relations between Animals and the elements in which they live.” Another philosophical paper contributed to the Journal discusses the “Primitive diversity and number of Animals in Geological times” (17, 309, 1854). Of his systematic papers, those on the fishes of the Tennessee river, describing many new species, were published in the Journal (17, 297, 353, 1854).
