THE NATURALIST AND HIS FATHER.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume VII, Issue 324, 4 July 1879, Page 19

THE NATURALIST AND HIS FATHER.

A btory is told of Agassiz, the great naturalist, which, we believe, has never yet appeared in print :— His father destined him for a commercial life, and was impatient at his devotion to frogs, snakes and nsb.es. The latter, especially, were objects of the boy's attention, tvs vacations he spent in making journeys on foot through Europe, examining the different species of fresh-water fishes. "If you can prove to me," said his father, " that you really know anything about science, I will consent that you shall give up the career I have planned for you." Young Agassiz, in his next vacation, being then eighteen, visited England, and took with him a letter of introduction to Bir Roderick Murchison. " You have been studying nature," said the great man, bluntly. " What have you learned ?" The lad was timid, not sure at that moment that he had learned anything. " I think," he said at last. « I know a little about fishes." " Veiy well, there will be a meeting of the Royal Society to-night. I will take you with me there. AH of the great scientific savants of England belonged to this society. That evening, when the business of the meeting was over, bir Roderick arose and said : " I have a young friend here from Switzerland, who thinks he knows something about fishes ; how much, I have a fancy to try. There is, under this cloth, a perfect skeleton of a fish which existed long before man." He then gave him the precise locality in which it had been found with one or two other facts concerning it. The species to which the specimen belonged was, of course, extinct. " Can you sketch for me on the blackboard yy vu U i r i S* 8 of this fish f " saivl Sir Roderick. Agassiz took up the chalk, hesitated a moment, and then sketched rapidly a skeleton nsn. Sir Roderick held up the specimen. The portrait was'correct in every bone and line. The grave old doctors burst into loud applause. " Sir," Agassi said, on telling the story, " that was the proudest moment of my life— no, the happiest, for I knew, now, my lather would consent that I should give my life to science."