[P.S.] Look carefully at the new number of Poggendorf, in which you
will find beautiful discoveries of Ehrenberg (microscopical) on the
difference of structure between the brain and the nerves of motion,
also upon the crystals forming the silvered portion of the
peritoneum of Esox lucius.
In October, 1833, Agassiz's marriage to Cecile Braun, the sister of
his life-long friend, Alexander Braun, took place. He brought his
wife home to a small apartment in Neuchatel, where they began their
housekeeping after the simplest fashion, with such economy as their
very limited means enforced. Her rare artistic talent, hitherto
devoted to her brother's botanical pursuits, now found a new field.
Trained to accuracy in drawing objects of Natural History, she had
an artist's eye for form and color. Some of the best drawings in
the Fossil Fishes and the Fresh-Water Fishes are from her hand.
Throughout the summer, notwithstanding the trouble in his eyes,
Agassiz had been still pressing on these works. His two artists,
Mr. Dinkel and Mr. Weber, the former in Paris, the latter in
Neuchatel, were constantly busy on his plates.
Although Agassiz was at this time only twenty-six years of age, his
correspondence already shows that the interest of scientific men,
all over Europe, was attracted to him and to his work. From
investigators of note in his own country, from those of France,
Italy, and Germany, from England, and even from America, the
distant El Dorado of naturalists in those days, came offers of
cooperation, accompanied by fossil fishes or by the drawings of
rare or unique specimens. He was known in all the museums of Europe
as an indefatigable worker and collector, seeking everywhere
materials for comparison.
Among the letters of this date is one from Charpentier, one of the
pioneers of glacial investigation, under whose auspices, two years
later, Agassiz began his inquiries into glacial phenomena. He
writes him from the neighborhood of Bex, his home in the valley of
the Rhone, the classic land of glacial work; but he writes of
Agassiz's special subjects, inviting him to come and see such
fossils as were to be found in his neighborhood, and to investigate
certain phenomena of upheaval and of plutonic action in the same
region, little dreaming that the young zoologist was presently to
join him in his own chosen field of research.
Agassiz now began also to receive pressing invitations from the
English naturalists, from Buckland, Lyell, Murchison, and others,
to visit England, and examine their wonderful collections of fossil
remains.
FROM PROFESSOR BUCKLAND TO AGASSIZ.
OXFORD, December 25, 1833.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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