Medical School of Zurich.
Life and Studies there.
University of Heidelberg.
Studies interrupted by Illness.
Return to Switzerland.
Occupations during Convalescence.

JEAN LOUIS RODOLPHE AGASSIZ was born May 28, 1807, at the village
of Motier, on the Lake of Morat. His father, Louis Rodolphe
Agassiz, was a clergyman; his mother, Rose Mayor, was the daughter
of a physician whose home was at Cudrefin, on the shore of the Lake
of Neuchatel.

The parsonages in Switzerland are frequently pretty and
picturesque. That of Motier, looking upon the lake and sheltered by
a hill which commands a view over the whole chain of the Bernese
Alps, was especially so. It possessed a vineyard large enough to
add something in good years to the small salary of the pastor; an
orchard containing, among other trees, an apricot famed the country
around for the unblemished beauty of its abundant fruit; a good
vegetable garden, and a delicious spring of water flowing always
fresh and pure into a great stone basin behind the house. That
stone basin was Agassiz's first aquarium; there he had his first
collection of fishes.* (* After his death a touching tribute was
paid to his memory by the inhabitants of his birthplace. With
appropriate ceremonies, a marble slab was placed above the door of
the parsonage of Motier, with this inscription, "J. Louis Agassiz,
celebre naturaliste, est ne dans cette maison, le 28 Mai, 1807.")

It does not appear that he had any precocious predilection for