Elizabeth Cary Agassiz, Louis Agassiz: his life and correspondence, third edition

Agassiz now began to feel an increased anxiety about his collections. During the six years of his stay in the United States he had explored the whole Atlantic sea-board as well as the lake and river system of the Eastern and Middle States, and had amassed such materials in natural history as already gave his collections, in certain departments at least, a marked importance. In the lower animals, and as illustrating the embryology of the marine invertebrates, they were especially valuable. It had long been a favorite idea with him to build up an embryological department in his prospective museum; the more so because such a provision on any large scale had never been included in the plan of the great zoological institutions, and he believed it would have a direct and powerful influence on the progress of modern science. The collections now in his possession included ample means for this kind of research, beside a fair representation of almost all classes of the animal kingdom. Packed together, however, in the narrowest quarters, they were hardly within his own reach, much less could they be made available for others. His own resources