lecturing, but in organizing, distributing, and superintending the work
of the laboratories, all of which was directed by him. Passing from
bench to bench, from table to table, with a suggestion here, a kindly
but scrutinizing glance there, he made his sympathetic presence felt by
the whole establishment. No man ever exercised a more genial personal
influence over his students and assistants.

His initiatory steps in teaching special students of natural history
were not a little discouraging. Observation and comparison being in his
opinion the intellectual tools most indispensable to the naturalist,
his first lesson was one in _looking_. He gave no assistance; he
simply left his student with the specimen, telling him to use his eyes
diligently, and report upon what he saw. He returned from time to time
to inquire after the beginner's progress, but he never asked him a
leading question, never pointed out a single feature of the structure,
never prompted an inference or a conclusion. This process lasted
sometimes for days, the professor requiring the pupil not only to
distinguish the various parts of the animal, but to detect also the
relation of these details to more general typical features. His
students still retain amusing reminiscences of their despair when thus
confronted with their single specimen; no aid to be had from outside
until they had wrung from it the secret of its structure. But all of
them have recognized the fact that this one lesson in looking, which
forced them to such careful scrutiny of the object before them,
influenced all their subsequent habits of observation, whatever field
they might choose for their special subject of study....

But if Agassiz, in order to develop independence and accuracy of
observation, threw his students on their own resources at first, there
was never a more generous teacher in the end than he. All his