species of side-swimmers had cycloid scales on one side and ctenoid on
the other. This not only shocked my sense of the value of
classification in a way that permitted of no full recovery of my
original respect for the process, but for a time shook my confidence in
my master's knowledge. At the same time I had a malicious pleasure in
exhibiting my 'find' to him, expecting to repay in part the humiliation
which he had evidently tried to inflict on my conceit. To my question
as to how the nondescript should be classified he said: 'My boy, there
are now two of us who know that.'

This incident of the fish made an end of my novitiate. After that,
with a suddenness of transition which puzzled me, Agassiz became very
communicative; we passed indeed into the relation of friends of like
age and purpose, and he actually consulted me as to what I should like
to take up as a field of study. Finding that I wished to devote myself
to geology, he set me to work on the Brachiopoda as the best group of
fossils to serve as data in determining the Palaeozoic horizons. So far
as his rather limited knowledge of the matter went, he guided me in the
field about Cambridge, in my reading, and to acquaintances of his who
were concerned with earth structures. I came thus to know Charles T.
Jackson, Jules Marcou, and, later, the brothers Rogers, Henry and
James. At the same time I kept up the study of zoology, undertaking to
make myself acquainted with living organic forms as a basis for a
knowledge of fossils.




V