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[638] have enjoyed. Thus far, the whole number of fishes known from the Amazons has amounted to a little over one hundred, counting everything that may exist from these waters, in the Jardin des Plantes, the British Museum, the museums of Munich, Berlin, Vienna, etc.; while I have collected and now hold, in good state of preservation, fourteen hundred and forty-two species, and may get a few hundred more before returning to Para. I have so many duplicates that I may make every other museum tributary to ours, so far as the fresh-water animals of Brazil are concerned. This may seem very unimportant to a statesman. But I am satisfied that it affords a standard by which to estimate the resources of Brazil, as they may be hereafter developed. The basin of the Amazons is another Mississippi, having a tropical climate, tempered by moisture. Here is room for a hundred million happy human beings.

Ever truly your friend,


The repose of the return voyage, after sixteen months of such uninterrupted work, and of fresh impressions daily crowding upon each other, was most grateful to Agassiz. The

Houghton, Mifflin and company, New York, Boston, 1885.

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