The proximity of the sea and the ease with which I can visit any part of the coast within a range of some twenty degrees give me inexhaustible resources for the whole year, which, as time goes on, I turn more and more to the best account. On the other hand, the abundance and admirable state of preservation of the fossils found in our ancient deposits, as well as the regular succession of the beds containing them, contribute admirable material for this kind of comparative study. . . In the summer of 1851 Agassiz was invited to a professorship at the Medical College in Charleston, S.C. This was especially acceptable to him, because it substituted a regular course of instruction to students, for the disconnected lectures given to miscellaneous audiences, in various parts of the country, by which he was obliged to eke out his small salary and provide for his scientific expenses. While more fatiguing than class-room work, these scattered lectures had a less educational value, though, on the other hand, they awakened a very wide-spread interest in the study of nature. The strain of constant traveling for this purpose, the more harassing because so unfavorable to his habits of continuous work, had already told severely upon his health; and from this point of view also the new professorship was attractive, as promising a more quiet, though no less occupied, life. The lectures were to be given during the three winter months, thus occupying the interval between his autumn and spring courses at Cambridge. He assumed his new duties at Charleston in December, 1851, and by the kindness of his friend Mrs. Rutledge, who offered him the use of her cottage for the purpose, he soon established a laboratory on Sullivan's Island, where the two or three assistants he had brought with him could work conveniently. The cottage stood within hearing of the wash of the waves, at the head of the long, hard sand beach which fringed the island shore for some three or four miles. There could hardly be a more favorable position for a naturalist, and there, in the midst of their specimens, Agassiz and his band of workers might constantly be found. His studies here were of the greater interest to him because they connected themselves with his previous researches, not only upon the fishes, but also upon the lower marine animals of the coast of New England and of the Florida reefs; so that he had now a basis for comparison of the fauna scattered along the whole Atlantic coast of the United States. The following letter gives some idea of his work at this time. TO PROFESSOR JAMES D. DANA. CHARLESTON, January 26, 1852. MY DEAR FRIEND, You should at least know that I think of you often on these shores. And how could I do otherwise when I daily find new small crustacea, which remind me of the important work you are now preparing on that subject.