ag2

   Of course, Agassiz wanted to make that mesoblastic drawing, or some other equally important drawing, and had to have the fresh turtle egg to draw it from. He had to have it, and he got it. A great man, when he wants a certain turtle egg, at a certain time, always gets it, for he gets someone else to get it. I am glad he got it. But what makes me sad and impatient is that he did not think it worth while to tell about the getting of it, and so made merely a learned turtle book of what might have been an exceedingly interesting human book.
    It would seem, naturally, that there could be nothing unusual or interesting about the getting of turtle eggs when you want them. Nothing at all, if you should chance to want the eggs as you chance to find them. So with anything else - good copper stock, for instance, if you should chance to want it, and should chance to be along when they chance to be giving it away. But if you want copper stock, say of C & H quality, when you want it, and are bound to have it, then you must command more than a college professor's salary. And likewise, precisely, when it is turtle eggs that you are bound to have.
    Agassiz wanted those turtle eggs when he wanted them, not a minute over three hours from the minute they were laid. Yet even that does not seem exacting, hardly more difficult than the getting of hen eggs only three hours old. Just so, provided the professor could have had his private turtle coop in Harvard Yard; and provided he could have made his turtles lay. But turtles will not respond, like hens, to meat scraps and the warm mash. The professor's problem was not to get from a mud turtle's nest in the back yard to the table in the laboratory; but to get from the laboratory in Cambridge to some pond when the turtles were laying, and back to the laboratory within the limited time. And this, in the days of Darius Green, might have called for nice and discriminating work, as it did.
    Agassiz had been engaged for a long time upon his Contributions. He had brought the great work nearly to a finish. It was, indeed, finished but for one small yet very important bit of observation: he had carried the turtle egg through every stage of its development with the single exception of one, the very earliest, that stage of first cleavages, when the cell begins to segment, immediately upon its being laid. That beginning stage had brought the Contributions to a halt. To get eggs that were fresh enough to show the incubation at this period had been impossible.
    There were several ways that Agassiz might have proceeded: he might have got a leave of absence for the spring term, taken his laboratory to some pond inhabited by turtles, and there camped until he should catch the reptile digging out her nest. But there were difficulties in all of that, as those who are college professors and naturalists know. As this was quite out of the question, he did the easiest thing - asked Mr. "Jenks of Middleboro" to get him the eggs. Mr. Jenks got them. Agassiz knew all about his getting of them; and I say the strange and irritating thing is that Agassiz did not think it worth while to tell us about it, a least in the preface to his monumental work.
    It was many years later that Mr. Jenks, then a gray-haired college professor, told me how he got those eggs to Agassiz.
    "I was principal of an academy, during my younger years," he began, "and was busy one day with my classes, when a large man suddenly filled the doorway of the room, smiled to the four corners of the room, and called out with a big, quick voice that he was Professor Agassiz.
    "Of course he was. I knew it, even before he had time to shout it to me across the room.
    "Would I get him some turtle eggs? he called. Yes, I would. And would I get them to Cambridge within three hours from the time they were laid? Yes, I would. And I did. And it was worth the doing. But I did it only once.
    "When I promised Agassiz those eggs I knew where I was going to get them. I had got turtle eggs there before, at a particular patch of sandy shore along a pond, a few miles distant from the academy.
    "Three hours was the limit. From the railroad station to Boston was thirty-five miles; from the pond to the station was perhaps three or four miles; from Boston to Cambridge we called about three miles. Forty miles in round numbers! We figured it all out before he returned, and got the trip down to two hours-record time: driving from the pond to the station; from the station by express train to Boston; from Boston by cab to Cambridge. This left an easy hour for accidents and delays.
    "Cab and car and carriage we reckoned into our time-table; but what we didn't figure on was the turtle." And he paused abruptly.
    "Young man," he went on, his shaggy brows and spectacles hardly hiding the twinkle in the eyes that were bent severely upon me, "young man, when you go after turtle eggs, take into account the turtle No! no! That's bad advice. Youth never reckons on the turtle, and youth seldom ought to. Only old age does that; and old age would never have got those turtle eggs to Agassiz.
    "It was in the early spring that Agassiz came to the academy, long before there was any likelihood of the turtles laying. But I was eager for the quest, and so fearful of failure that I started out to watch at the pond fully two weeks ahead of the time that the turtles might be expected to lay. I remember the date clearly: it was May I4.
    "A little before dawn, along near three o'clock. I would drive over to the pond, hitch my horse near by, settle myself quietly among some thick cedars close to the sandy share, and there I would wait, my kettle of sand ready, my eye covering the whole sleeping pond. Here among the cedars I would eat my breakfast, and then get back in good season to open the academy for the morning session.
    "And so the watch began.