Seaside Studies in Natural History. Marine Animals of Massachusetts Bay: Radiates. by Agassiz, Elizabeth C. and Agassiz, Alexander - 1865

Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1865. First edition.

1865 FIRST EDITION ALEXANDER AGASSIZ SIGNED ASSOCIATION COPY OF AMERICAN MARINE BIOLOGY BOOK WITH DARWIN CONNECTION.

8 3/4 inch hardcover,vi, 155 pages, original dark green cloth binding, blindstamped covers, gilt title to spine, inscribed front endpaper to "Prof Jeffries Wyman, with the regards of Alex Agassiz". 185 fine wood engravings throughout the text. Spine ends frayed, spine dulled, 1/4 inch chip to bottom corner of free endpaper, otherwise unmarked and overall very good. The 1871 edition is cited by Darwin in his reading notebook. Alexander's father, Louis, had become a passionate anti-Darwinist, whereas Wyman had become an ally!

ALEXANDER EMMANUEL RODOLPHE AGASSIZ (1835 - 1910), son of Louis Agassiz, was an American scientist and engineer. Agassiz was born in Neuchâtel, Switzerland and immigrated to the United States with his father, Louis, in 1849. He graduated from Harvard University in 1855, and in 1859 became an assistant in the United States Coast Survey. Agassiz was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1862. Up until the summer of 1866, Agassiz worked as an assistant in the museum of natural history that his father founded at Harvard. In 1865, he published with Elizabeth Cary Agassiz, his stepmother, Seaside Studies in Natural History. Agassiz served as a president of the National Academy of Sciences, which since 1913 has awarded the Alexander Agassiz Medal in his memory. Agassiz wrote to Darwin to arrange a meeting with him at his home in Down, and Darwin invited him to lunch (October 1870).

JEFFRIES WYMAN (1814-1874) was an American naturalist and anatomist, born in Chelmsford, Massachusetts. He graduated from Harvard College in 1833 and Harvard Medical School in 1837. He was made curator at Lowell Institute, Boston, in 1839 and remained affiliated there until 1842. Fees from Lowell Institute lectures enabled him to study in Europe, from 1841-842, where he had the opportunity to study under anatomist Richard Owen in London. In 1847, he became Hersey Professor of Anatomy at Harvard College, where he remained until his death, becoming the first curator of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology there in 1866. He made extensive and valuable collections in comparative anatomy and archæology, and he published nearly 70 scientific papers. He was the president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1858. When On the Origin of Species was published in 1859, Wyman's one-time mentor, Richard Owen came out against the book, while his colleague Asa Gray supported it. In 1860, Darwin went to Gray to enlist Wyman's support due to Wyman's work on higher apes and anatomy. Wyman wrote to Darwin agreeing that "progressive development is a far more probable theory than progressive creations", and the two men corresponded between 1860 and 1866, with Darwin writing at one point "I know hardly anyone whose opinions I should be more inclined to defer to."