AGASSIZ AT HARVARD

[Footnote: From E. C. Agassiz, _Louis Agassiz, his Life and
Correspondence_, pp. 564 ff. Boston, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1885.]


On his return to Cambridge at the end of September [1859], Agassiz
found the Museum building well advanced. It was completed in the course
of the next year, and the dedication took place on the 13th of
November, 1860. The transfer of the collections to their new and safe
abode was made as rapidly as possible, and the work of developing the
institution under these more favorable conditions moved steadily on.
The lecture-rooms were at once opened, not only to students, but to
other persons not connected with the University. Especially welcome
were teachers of schools, for whom admittance was free. It was a great
pleasure to Agassiz thus to renew and strengthen his connection with
the teachers of the State, with whom, from the time of his arrival in
this country, he had held most cordial relations, attending the
Teachers' Institutes, visiting the normal schools, and associating
himself actively, as far as he could, with the interests of public
education in Massachusetts. From this time forward his college lectures
were open to women as well as to men. He had great sympathy with the
desire of women for larger and more various fields of study and work,
and a certain number of women have always been employed as assistants
at the Museum.

The story of the next three years was one of unceasing but seemingly
uneventful work. The daylight hours from nine or ten o'clock in the
morning were spent, with the exception of the hour devoted to the
school, at the Museum, not only in personal researches and in