Take This Fish And Look At It

Take This Fish and Look at It By Samuel H. Scudder, In the Laboratory With Agassiz, Every Saturday, (April 4, 1974) 16, 369-370. (Choose either para.1 8: 537 w; or para. 9-19: 557 w) 1   It was more than fifteen years ago that I entered the laboratory of Professor Agassiz, and told him I had enrolled my name in the scientific School as a student of natural history. He asked me a few questions about my object in coming, my introductory experience, the mode in which I afterwards proposed to use the conversance I might acquire, and, finally, whether I wished to study any au naturel(p) branch. To the latter I replied that, while I wished to be well grounded in all departments of zoology, I purposed to devote myself specially to insects. 2   When do you wish to begin? he asked. 3   Now, I replied. 4   This seemed to please him, and with an energetic Very well! he reached from a shelf a huge jar of specimens in yellow alcohol. Take this fish, he state, and look at it; by and by I will ask what you have seen. 5   With that he left me, alone in a jiffy returned with explicit instructions as to the care of the object entrusted to me. 6   No man is fit to be a naturalist, tell he, who does not know how to take care of specimens.

7   I was to keep the fish before me in a canful tray, and occasionally moisten the surface with alcohol from the jar, always pleasant care to replace the stopper tightly. Those were not the days of ground-glass stoppers and elegantly shaped exhibition jars; all the old students will meditate the huge neckless glass bottles with their leaky, wax-besmeared corks, half eaten by in! sects, and skank with cellar dust. Entomology was a cleaner science than ichthyology, unless the example of the Professor, who had unhesitatingly plunged to the bottom of the jar to produce the fish, was infectious; and though this alcohol had a very ancient and fishlike smell, I really dared not show any aversion inside these sacred precincts, and treated the...If you want to get a include essay, order it on our website: OrderCustomPaper.com

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