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

[166] desired so earnestly to stop at Strasbourg and Carlsruhe, where I knew specimens were to be seen which would have a direct bearing on my aim. The result has far surpassed my expectation. I hastened to show my material to M. Cuvier the very day after my arrival. He received me with great politeness, though with a certain reserve, and immediately gave me permission to see everything in the galleries of the Museum. But as I knew that he had put together in private collections all that could be of use to himself in writing his book, and as he had never said a word to me of his plan of publication, I remained in a painful state of doubt, since the completion of his work would have destroyed all chance for the sale of mine. Last Saturday I was passing the evening there, and we were talking of science, when he desired his secretary to bring him a certain portfolio of drawings. He showed me the contents; they were drawings of fossil fishes and notes which he had taken in the British Museum and elsewhere. After looking it through with me, he said he had seen with satisfaction the manner in which I had treated this subject; that I had indeed anticipated him, since he had intended at some future time to do the same thing;