"A numerous audience assembled on the 26th of March for the opening of a course by Professor Agassiz on the 'Plan of Creation.' It is with an ever new pleasure that our public come together to listen to this savant, still so young and already so celebrated. Not content with pursuing in seclusion his laborious scientific investigations, he makes a habit of communicating, almost annually, to an audience less restricted than that of the Academy the general result of some of his researches. All the qualities to which Mr. Agassiz has accustomed his listeners were found in the opening prelude; the fullness and freedom of expression which give to his lectures the character of a scientific causerie; the dignified ease of bearing, joined with the simplicity and candor of a savant who teaches neither by aphorisms nor oracles, but who frankly admits the public to the results of his researches; the power of generalization always based upon a patient study of facts, which he knows how to present with remarkable clearness in a language that all can understand. We will not follow the professor in tracing the outlines of his course. Suffice it to say that he intends to show in the general development of the animal kingdom the existence of a definite preconceived plan, successively carried out; in other words, the manifestation of a higher thought,--the thought of God. This creative thought may be studied under three points of view: as shown in the relations which, spite of their manifold diversity, connect all the species now living on the surface of the globe; in their geographical distribution; and in the succession of beings from primitive epochs until the present condition of things." The summer of 1845 was the last which Agassiz passed at home. It was broken by a short and hurried visit to the glacier of the Aar, respecting which no details have been preserved. He did not then know that he was taking a final leave of his cabin among the rocks and ice. Affairs connected with the welfare of the institution in Neuchatel, with which he had been so long connected, still detained him for a part of the winter, and he did not leave for Paris until the first week in March, 1846. His wife and daughters had already preceded him to Germany, where he was to join them again on his way to Paris, and where they were to pass the period of his absence, under the care of his brother-in-law, Mr. Alexander Braun, then living at Carlsruhe. His son was to remain at school at Neuchatel.