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

From Humboldt to Agassiz.

. . . I hear that by some untoward circumstances, no doubt accidental, you have never received, my dear Agassiz, the letter expressing the pleasure which I share with all true lovers of science respecting your important undertaking, ‘Contributions to the Natural History of the United States.’ You must have been astonished at my silence, remembering, not only the affectionate relations we have held to each other ever since your first sojourn at Paris, but also the admiration I have never ceased to feel for the great and solid works which we owe to your sagacious mind and your incomparable intellectual energy. . . . I approve especially the general conceptions which lie at the base of the plan you have traced. I admire the long series of physiological investigations, beginning with the embryology of the so-called simple and lower organisms and ascending by degrees to the more complicated. I admire that ever-renewed