Part 22

An honest, plain, sensible Country Mouse is said to have entertained at his hole one day a fine Mouse of the Town. Having formerly been playfellows together, they were old acquaintances, which served as an apology for the visit. However, as master of the house, he thought himself obliged to do the honors of it in all respects, and to make as great a stranger of his guest as he possibly could. In order to do this he set before him a reserve of delicate gray pease and bacon, a dish of fine oatmeal, some parings of new cheese, and, to crown all with a dessert, a remnant of a charming mellow apple. In good manners, he forbore to eat any himself, lest the stranger should not have enough; but that he might seem to bear the other company, sat and nibbled a piece of a wheaten straw very busily. At last, says the spark of the town:--"Old crony, give me leave to be a little free with you: how can you bear to live in this nasty, dirty, melancholy hole here, with nothing but woods, and meadows, and mountains, and rivulets about you? Do not you prefer the conversation of the world to the chirping of birds, and the splendor of a court to the rude aspect of an uncultivated desert? Come, take my word for it, you will find it a change for the better. Never stand considering, but away this moment. Remember, we are not immortal, and therefore have no time to lose. Make sure of to-day, and spend it as agreeably as you can: you know not what may happen to-morrow." In short, these and such like arguments prevailed, and his Country Acquaintance was resolved to go to town that night. So they both set out upon their journey together, proposing to sneak in after the close of the evening. They did so; and about midnight made their entry into a certain great house, where there had been an extraordinary entertainment the day before, and several tit-bits, which some of the servants had purloined, were hid under the seat of a window. The Country Guest was immediately placed in the midst of a rich Persian carpet: and now it was the Courtier's turn to entertain; who indeed acquitted himself in that capacity with the utmost readiness and address, changing the courses as elegantly, and tasting everything first as judiciously, as any clerk of the kitchen. The other sat and enjoyed himself like a delighted epicure, tickled to the last degree with this new turn of his affairs; when on a sudden, a noise of somebody opening the door made them start from their seats, and scuttle in confusion about the dining-room. Our Country Friend, in particular, was ready to die with fear at the barking of a huge mastiff or two, which opened their throats just about the same time, and made the whole house echo. At last, recovering himself:--"Well," says he, "if this be your town-life, much good may you do with it: give me my poor, quiet hole again, with my homely but comfortable gray pease."

THE DOG AND THE WOLF

A lean, hungry, half-starved Wolf happened, one moonshiny night, to meet with a jolly, plump, well-fed Mastiff; and after the first compliments were passed, says the Wolf:--"You look extremely well. I protest, I think I never saw a more graceful, comely person; but how comes it about, I beseech you, that you should live so much better than I? I may say, without vanity, that I venture fifty times more than you do; and yet I am almost ready to perish with hunger." The Dog answered very bluntly, "Why, you may live as well, if you will do the same for it that I do."--"Indeed? what is that?" says he.--"Why," says the Dog, "only to guard the house a-nights, and keep it from thieves."--"With all my heart," replies the Wolf, "for at present I have but a sorry time of it; and I think to change my hard lodging in the woods, where I endure rain, frost, and snow, for a warm roof over my head, and a bellyful of good victuals, will be no bad bargain."--"True," says the Dog; "therefore you have nothing more to do but to follow me." Now, as they were jogging on together, the Wolf spied a crease in the Dog's neck, and having a strange curiosity, could not forbear asking him what it meant. "Pooh! nothing," says the Dog.--"Nay, but pray--" says the Wolf.--"Why," says the Dog, "if you must know, I am tied up in the daytime, because I am a little fierce, for fear I should bite people, and am only let loose a-nights. But this is done with design to make me sleep a-days, more than anything else, and that I may watch the better in the night-time; for as soon as ever the twilight appears, out I am turned, and may go where I please. Then my master brings me plates of bones from the table with his own hands, and whatever scraps are left by any of the family, all fall to my share; for you must know I am a favorite with everybody. So you see how you are to live. Come, come along: what is the matter with you?"--"No," replied the Wolf, "I beg your pardon: keep your happiness all to yourself. Liberty is the word with me; and I would not be a king upon the terms you mention."

JEAN LOUIS RODOLPHE AGASSIZ

(1807-1873)

"At first, when a mere boy, twelve years of age," writes the great Swiss naturalist, "I did what most beginners do. I picked up whatever I could lay my hands on, and tried, by such books and authorities as I had at my command, to find the names of these objects. My highest ambition at that time, was to be able to designate the plants and animals of my native country correctly by a Latin name, and to extend gradually a similar knowledge in its application to the productions of other countries. This seemed to me, in those days, the legitimate aim and proper work of a naturalist. I still possess manuscript volumes in which I entered the names of all the animals and plants with which I became acquainted, and I well remember that I then ardently hoped to acquire the same superficial familiarity with the whole creation. I did not then know how much more important it is to the naturalist to understand the structure of a few animals than to command the whole field of scientific nomenclature. Since I have become a teacher, and have watched the progress of students, I have seen that they all begin in the same way. But how many have grown old in the pursuit, without ever rising to any higher conception of the study of nature, spending their life in the determination of species, and in extending scientific terminology! Long before I went to the university, and before I began to study natural history under the guidance of men who were masters in the science during the early part of this century, I perceived that though nomenclature and classification, as then understood, formed an important part of the study, being, in fact, its technical language, the study of living beings in their natural element was of infinitely greater value. At that age--namely, about fifteen--I spent most of the time I could spare from classical and mathematical studies in hunting the neighboring woods and meadows for birds, insects, and land and fresh-water shells. My room became a little menagerie, while the stone basin under the fountain in our yard was my reservoir for all the fishes I could catch. Indeed, collecting, fishing, and raising caterpillars, from which I reared fresh, beautiful butterflies, were then my chief pastimes. What I know of the habits of the fresh-water fishes of Central Europe I mostly learned at that time; and I may add, that when afterward I obtained access to a large library and could consult the works of Bloch and Lacépède, the only extensive works on fishes then in existence. I wondered that they contained so little about their habits, natural attitudes, and mode of action, with which I was so familiar."

[Illustration: J.L.R. AGASSIZ.]

It is this way of looking at things that gives to Agassiz's writings their literary and popular interest. He was born in Mortier, Canton Fribourg, May 28th, 1807, the son of a clergyman, who sent his gifted son to the Universities of Zürich, Heidelberg, and Munich, where he acquired reputation for his brilliant powers, and entered into the enthusiastic, intellectual, and merry student-life, taking his place in the formal duels, and becoming known as a champion fencer. Agassiz was an influence in every centre that he touched; and in Munich, his room and his laboratory, thick with clouds of smoke from the long-stemmed German pipes, was a gathering-place for the young scientific aspirants, who affectionately called it "The Little Academy." At the age of twenty-two, he had published his 'Fishes of Brazil,' a folio that brought him into immediate recognition. Cuvier, the greatest ichthyologist of his time, to whom the first volume was dedicated, received him as a pupil, and gave to him all the material that he had been collecting during fifteen years for a contemplated work on Fossil Fishes. In Paris Agassiz also won the friendship of Humboldt, who, learning that he stood in need of money, presented him with so generous a sum as to enable the ambitious young naturalist to work with a free and buoyant spirit.

His practical career began in 1832, when he was installed at Neufchâtel, from which point he easily studied the Alps. Two years later, after the 'Poissons fossiles' (Fossil Fishes) appeared, he visited England to lecture. Then returning to his picturesque home, he applied himself to original investigation, and through his lectures and publications won honors and degrees. His daring opinions, however, sometimes provoked ardent discussion and angry comment.

Agassiz's passion for investigation frequently led him into dangers that imperiled both life and limb. In the summer of 1841, for example, he was lowered into a deep crevasse bristling with huge stalactites of ice, to reach the heart of a glacier moving at the rate of forty feet a day. While he was observing the blue bands on the glittering ice, he suddenly touched a well of water, and only after great difficulty made his companions understand his signal for rescue. These Alpine experiences are well described by Mrs. Elizabeth Gary Agassiz, and also by Edouard Desors in his 'Séjours dans les Glaciers' (Sojourn among the Glaciers: Neufchâtel, 1844). Interesting particulars of these glacial studies ('Études des Glaciers') were soon issued, and Agassiz received many gifts from lovers of science, among whom was numbered the King of Prussia. His zoölogical and geological investigations were continued, and important works on 'Fossil Mollusks,' 'Tertiary Shells,' and 'Living and Fossil Echinoderms' date from this period.

He had long desired to visit America, when he realized this wish in 1846 by an arrangement with the Lowell Institute of Boston, where he gave a series of lectures, afterwards repeated in various cities. So attractive did he find the fauna and flora of America, and so vast a field did he perceive here for his individual studies and instruction, that he returned the following year. In 1848 the Prussian government, which had borne the expenses of his scientific mission,--a cruise along our Atlantic coast to study its marine life,--released him from further obligation that he might accept the chair of geology in the Lawrence Scientific School of Harvard University. His cruises, his explorations, and his methods, combined with his attractive personality, gave him unique power as a teacher; and many of his biographers think that of all his gifts, the ability to instruct was the most conspicuous. He needed no text-books, for he went directly to Nature, and did not believe in those technical, dry-as-dust terms which lead to nothing and which are swept away by the next generation. Many noted American men of science remember the awakening influence of his laboratories in Charleston and Cambridge, his museum at Harvard, and his summer school at Penikese Island in Buzzard's Bay, Massachusetts, where natural history was studied under ideal conditions. It was here that he said to his class:--"A laboratory of natural history is a sanctuary where nothing profane should be tolerated." Whittier has left a poem called "The Prayer of Agassiz," describing

"The isle of Penikese Ranged about by sapphire seas."

Just as he was realizing two of his ambitions, the establishment of a great museum and a practical school of zoölogy, he died, December 14th, 1873, at his home in Cambridge, and was buried at Mount Auburn beneath pine-trees sent from Switzerland, while a bowlder from the glacier of the Aar was selected to mark his resting-place.

Agassiz was greatly beloved by his pupils and associates, and was identified with the brilliant group--Emerson, Longfellow, Holmes, and Lowell,--each of whom has written of him. Lowell considered his 'Elegy on Agassiz,' written in Florence in 1874, among his best verses; Longfellow wrote a poem for 'The Fiftieth Birthday of Agassiz,' and Holmes 'A Farewell to Agassiz' on his departure for the Andes, whose affectionate and humorous strain thus closes:--

"Till their glorious raid is o'er, And they touch our ransomed shore! Then the welcome of a nation, With its shout of exultation, Shall awake the dumb creation, And the shapes of buried aeons Join the living creatures' paeans, While the mighty megalosaurus Leads the palaeozoic chorus,-- God bless the great Professor, And the land its proud possessor,-- Bless them now and evermore!"

Numerous biographies and monographs of Agassiz exist in many languages, a complete list of which is given in the last published 'Life of Agassiz,' by Jules Marcou (New York and London, 1896), and also in the 'Life of Agassiz,' by Charles F. Holder (New York, 1893). Complete lists of Agassiz's works are also given in these biographies, and these titles show how versatile was his taste and how deep and wide his research. His principal contributions to science are in French and Latin, but his most popular books appeared in English. These include 'The Structure of Animal Life,' 'Methods of Study,' 'Geological Sketches,' and 'Journey in Brazil,' the latter written with Mrs. Agassiz. His 'Contributions to the Natural History of the United States,' planned to be in ten large books, only reached four volumes.

In his 'Researches concerning Fossil Fishes,' Agassiz expressed the views that made him a lifelong opponent of the Darwinian theories, although he was a warm friend of Darwin. Considering the demands upon his time as teacher, lecturer, and investigator, the excellence not less than the amount of the great naturalist's work is remarkable, and won such admiration that he was made a member of nearly every scientific society in the world. One of his favorite pastimes was deep-sea dredging, which embraced the excitement of finding strange specimens and studying their singular habits.

Of his love and gift for instructing, Mrs. Agassiz says in her 'Life' (Boston, 1885):--

"Teaching was a passion with him, and his power over his pupils might be measured by his own enthusiasm. He was, intellectually as well as socially, a democrat in the best sense. He delighted to scatter broadcast the highest results of thought and research, and to adapt them even to the youngest and most uninformed minds. In his later American travels he would talk of glacial phenomena to the driver of a country stage-coach among the mountains, or to some workman splitting rock at the roadside, with as much earnestness as if he had been discussing problems with a brother geologist; he would take the common fisherman into his scientific confidence, telling him the intimate secrets of fish-culture or fish-embryology, till the man in his turn grew enthusiastic and began to pour out information from the stores of his own rough and untaught habits of observation. Agassiz's general faith in the susceptibility of the popular intelligence, however untaught, to the highest truths of nature, was contagious, and he created or developed that in which he believed."

The following citations exhibit his powers of observation, and that happy meth