ted
son to the Universities of Zuerich, 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 Neufchatel,
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 'Sejours dans les Glaciers' (Sojourn among the Glaciers:
Neufchatel, 1844). Interesting particulars of these glacial studies
('Etudes des Glaciers') were soon issued, and Agassiz received many
gifts from lovers of science, among whom was numbered the King of
Prussia. His zooelogical and geologi