Louis Agassiz as a Teacher | Page 7

concerned himself no further with me that
day, nor the next, nor for a week. At first, this neglect was distressing;
but I saw that it was a game, for he was, as I discerned rather than saw,
covertly watching me. So I set my wits to work upon the thing, and in
the course of a hundred hours or so thought I had done much--a
hundred times as much as seemed possible at the start. I got interested
in finding out how the scales went in series, their shape, the form and
placement of the teeth, etc. Finally, I felt full of the subject, and
probably expressed it in my bearing; as for words about it then, there
were none from my master except his cheery 'Good morning.' At length,
on the seventh day, came the question, 'Well?' and my disgorge of
learning to him as he sat on the edge of my table puffing his cigar. At
the end of the hour's telling, he swung off and away, saying: 'That is
not right.' Here I began to think that, after all, perhaps the rules for
scanning Latin verse were not the worst infliction in the world.

Moreover, it was clear that he was playing a game with me to find if I
were capable of doing hard, continuous work without the support of a
teacher, and this stimulated me to labor. I went at the task anew,
discarded my first notes, and in another week of ten hours a day labor I
had results which astonished myself and satisfied him. Still there was
no trace of praise in words or manner. He signified that it would do by
placing before me about a half a peck of bones, telling me to see what I
could make of them, with no further directions to guide me. I soon
found that they were the skeletons of half a dozen fishes of different
species; the jaws told me so much at a first inspection. The task
evidently was to fit the separate bones together in their proper order.
Two months or more went to this task with no other help than an
occasional looking over my grouping with the stereotyped remark:
'That is not right.' Finally, the task was done, and I was again set upon
alcoholic specimens--this time a remarkable lot of specimens
representing, perhaps, twenty species of the side -swimmers or
Pleuronectidae.
I shall never forget the sense of power in dealing with things which I
felt in beginning the more extended work on a group of animals. I had
learned the art of comparing objects, which is the basis of the
naturalist's work. At this stage I was allowed to read, and to discuss my
work with others about me. I did both eagerly, and acquired a
considerable knowledge of the literature of ichthyology, becoming
especially interested in the system of classification, then most imperfect.
I tried to follow Agassiz's scheme of division into the order of ctenoids
and ganoids, with the result that I found one of my species of
side-swimmers had cycloid scales on one side and ctenoid on the other.
This not only shocked my sense of the value of classification in a way
that permitted of no full recovery of my original respect for the process,
but for a time shook my confidence in my master's knowledge. At the
same time I had a malicious pleasure in exhibiting my 'find' to him,
expecting to repay in part the humiliation which he had evidently tried
to inflict on my conceit. To my question as to how the nondescript
should be classified he said: 'My boy, there are now two of us who
know that.'
This incident of the fish made an end of my novitiate. After that, with a
suddenness of transition which puzzled me, Agassiz became very

communicative; we passed indeed into the relation of friends of like
age and purpose, and he actually consulted me as to what I should like
to take up as a field of study. Finding that I wished to devote myself to
geology, he set me to work on the Brachiopoda as the best group of
fossils to serve as data in determining the Palaeozoic horizons. So far
as his rather limited knowledge of the matter went, he guided me in the
field about Cambridge, in my reading, and to acquaintances of his who
were concerned with earth structures. I came thus to know Charles T.
Jackson, Jules Marcou, and, later, the brothers Rogers, Henry and
James. At the same time I kept up the study of zoology, undertaking to
make myself acquainted with living organic forms as a basis for a
knowledge of fossils.

V
HOW AGASSIZ TAUGHT PROFESSOR VERRILL
[Footnote: From a private letter from Professor Addison