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Erratic materials and boulders transported from the north were scattered over its surface, and Agassiz found the illustrations for his lectures on this topic ready to his hand. Indeed, some of his finest lectures on the ice-period were given at Penikese. Nothing could be less artificial, more free from constraint or formality, than the intercourse between him and his companions of this summer.
David Stair Jordan at Penikese, in the summer of 1873, from Agassiz's talks to teachers; see Popular Science Monthly 40. 726-727, and Holder, Louis Agassiz, his Life and Works, 1893, pp. 173-176. Never try to teach what you yourself do not know, and know well. If your school board insists on your teaching anything and everything, decline firmly to do it.
They shared all their scientific interests; and when they were both old men, Guyot brought to Agassiz's final undertaking, the establishment of a summer school at Penikese, a cooperation as active and affectionate as that he had given in his youth to his friend's scheme for establishing a permanent scientific summer station in the high Alps.
He persevered, nevertheless, to the end of the summer, and only left Penikese when the school broke up. In order to keep the story of this final effort unbroken, some events of great interest to Agassiz and of importance to the Museum have been omitted. In the spring the Museum had received a grant of 25,000 dollars from the Legislature.
Yet it was not easy for him to think of dying, when his imagination teemed with projects, and when the two main visions of his life were on the point of being fully accomplished, in the great Museum and the Anderson School of Natural History on the island of Penikese. Stricken though he was, he clung to life, nor did he give up all hope of recovery until the last day.
Summer schools for advanced students, and especially for teachers, have taken their place in the general system of education; and, though the Penikese school may be said to have died with its master, it lives anew in many a sea-side laboratory organized on the same plan, in summer schools of Botany and field classes of Geology.
It at once enlisted his sympathy both for the work and for the man. Within the week he offered to Agassiz, as a site for the school, the island of Penikese, in Buzzard's Bay, with the buildings upon it, consisting of a furnished dwelling-house and barn. Scarcely was this gift accepted than he added to it an endowment of 50,000 dollars for the equipment of the school.
When, therefore, the meeting of the British Association at Glasgow, at which they were both present, was over, they started together for the Highlands. In a lecture delivered by Agassiz, at his summer school at Penikese, a few months before his death, he recurred to this journey with the enthusiasm of a young man.
He therefore looked forward to a year of greater ease and efficiency in scientific work than he had ever enjoyed before. On returning from Penikese, full of the new possibilities thus opened to him, he allowed himself a short rest, partly at the sea-shore, partly in the mountains, and was again at his post in the Museum in October.
Rest and home became every day more imperative necessities. Return to Cambridge. Summer School proposed. Interest of Agassiz. Gift of Mr. Anderson. Prospectus of Penikese School. Difficulties. Opening of School. Summer Work. Close of School. Last Course of Lectures at Museum. Lecture before Board of Agriculture. Illness. Death. Place of Burial. In October, 1872, Agassiz returned to Cambridge.
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