The Chautauquan, Vol. 03, June 1883Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle
History
The Chautauquan, Vol. 03, June 1883
Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle
Chautauqua Institution -- Periodicals; Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle -- Periodicals
Prof. Agassiz taught at Penikese partly by lectures, and these
lectures, as was his custom, were always extemporaneous. No one who
ever heard him need be told that beyond all comparison he was the model
scientific talker of the age. Even those who have but read his lectures
know what a charm lingers in the sentences which have been transferred
to paper. But one must have heard him to realize the secret of his
greatest power. The printed lectures carry the brilliant thoughts,
the luminous and interesting facts, the flow of apt illustration;
but the glow and fervor of his own profound interest in the matter
of his speech, “raying out in a countenance that seemed to beam from
interior light, and pervade the tones of his sympathetic and singularly
expressive voice,” the “palpitating life” of his rapidly-uttered words,
and back of all his intense personal magnetism, diffusing itself
through the hearts of his charmed audience,—these are things that can
not be transferred to paper. Writers in attempting to describe the
manner of his eloquence have seemed to exhaust the vocabulary of eulogy.
At Penikese he probably excelled himself. He complimented his school
by seeming to believe that he was in the midst of friends, who fully
appreciated him, and who were in full sympathy with him. In 1864 it
was the good fortune of the writer of this paper to hear him deliver a
course of six lectures on the glaciers, before the Lowell Institute,
in Boston. They were charming, popular, grand; but at Penikese, on
the same subject, he seemed like a different man. All through his
summer life there flowed a current of quiet but profound happiness,
that lightened his step, glowed in his conversation, shone in his
countenance, and gave animation and radiance to his lectures, in a
manner he perhaps never before so fully exhibited. This thought was
common among the students there assembled. He gave lectures almost
every day, embracing full and exhaustive courses upon the glaciers,
upon embryology, upon classification, upon methods of instruction,
upon systematic zoölogy, upon scientific books and authors. There were
also the spontaneous lectures, called out by some casual remark, the
exhibition of some new and interesting specimen, or by the prominent
presence of some object of natural history, which we might not think
of studying at the time. For example, we were regaled one morning
with some fish for breakfast. Prof. Agassiz, entering after the rest
were seated, noticed the fish. Going immediately to the black-board,
which at that time was near and in full view; he said: “Ladies and
gentlemen: You are this morning feasting upon a very delicious fish,
called the scop. Its scientific name I will write upon the board. It is
Pagrus Argyrops—one of the sparoids. This species is not found north
of Cape Cod, or at least, very rarely found. Its range is from Cape
Cod west and southward. It is not found in the southern waters, only
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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