Louis Agassiz as a Teacher | Page 8

Emery Verrill
to Lane Cooper. The extract is printed with the consent of Professor
Verrill.]
In regard to the methods of instruction of Agassiz I must say that so far
as I saw and experienced he had no regular or fixed method, except that
his plan was to make young students depend on natural objects rather
than on statements in books. To that end he treated each one of his new
students differently, according to the amount of knowledge and
experience that the student had previously acquired, and often in line
with what the student had done before. Not infrequently young men
came to him who were utterly destitute of any knowledge or ability to
study natural science, or zoology in particular, but had an idea that it
would be a 'soft snap,' as the boys say. In such cases he often did give
them a lot of mixed stuff to mull over, to see what they could do, and
also to discourage those that seemed unfit. Sometimes he was mistaken,
of course, and the student would persevere and stay on--and sometimes
turned out well later. In fact, his treatment was highly and essentially
individualistic.
In my own case, he questioned me closely as to what I had previously
done and learned. He found I had made collections of birds, mammals,
plants, etc., and had mounted and identified them for several years, and
in that way was not a beginner exactly. I remember that before I had

been with him six months he told me I knew more zoology than most
students did when they graduated. Therefore my case was not like some
others. He had an idea, of course, that though I had collected and
mounted birds, and knew their names and habits, I probably knew little
about their anatomy. At any rate the first thing he did was to give me a
badly mutilated old loon, from old alcohol, telling me to prepare the
skeleton. This I did so well and so quickly that he expressed regret that
he had not given me some better bird with unbroken bones. He gave me
next a blue heron, but it being spring, I 'went collecting' in the vicinity,
following my usual inclination, before breakfast and after laboratory
hours, and brought in a number of incubated birds'-eggs. When Agassiz
came into the laboratory, I was extracting and preserving the embryos,
being interested in embryology. He at once exclaimed that he was
delighted, and told me to put aside the skeletons and go right on with
collecting and preparing embryo birds, and making drawings, etc. This
I did all that season, obtaining about 2,000 embryos, mostly of sea
birds, for he sent me to Grand Manan Island, etc., for that purpose.
Before the end of the first year he gave me entire charge of the birds
and mammals in the Museum, as well as the coral collection, which
was large even then.
In the case of Hyatt, who went there just before I did, I think he was
kept working over a lot of mixed fish skeletons, more or less broken, to
'see what he could make of them.' A little later he put Hyatt at work on
the Unionidae, studying the anatomy as well as the shells. Within two
years he put him on the Ammonites, a big collection having been
received from Europe at that time. Hyatt, however, had never done
anything in zoology or botany before he went to Agassiz and he found
it hard to get a beginning, and so lost time. I mention these cases to
show how different his methods were in different cases.

VI
HOW AGASSIZ TAUGHT PROFESSOR WILDER
[Footnote: From an article by Professor Burt G. Wilder, of Cornell
University, in _The Harvard Graduates' Magazine_, June, 1907. The
extract is taken from a reprint with slight changes by the author, and is
given with slight omissions by the present writer.]
The phrase adopted as the title of this article ['Louis Agassiz, Teacher']

begins his simple will, Agassiz was likewise an investigator, a director
of research, and the founder of a great museum. He really was four men
in one. Without detracting from the extent and value of the three other
elements of his intense and composite American life-- from his first
course of lectures before the Lowell Institute in 1846 to the
inauguration of the Anderson Summer School of Natural History at
Penikese Island, July 8, 1873, and his address before the Massachusetts
State Board of Agriculture, twelve days before his untimely death on
December 14, 1873,--Agassiz was pre-eminently a teacher. He taught
his assistants; he taught the teachers in the public schools; he taught
college students; he taught the public, and the common people heard
him gladly. His unparalleled achievements as an instructor are