1841-42.] DANIEL DOLLFUS-AUSSET. 209 



and a rather fantastic one at that, of what he had heard 

 during his stay in Switzerland. His half-scientific, half- 

 humorous poem " Die Eiszeit," printed at Neuchatel, 

 for friends, the I5th of February, 1837, the birthday of 

 Galileo Galilei, whose name Schimper had assumed when 

 a student, shows the state of mind into which he had al- 

 ready sunk; that of an obscured spirit. Schimper, after 

 brilliant " debuts " in science, produced nothing but two 

 small volumes of indifferent poetry, entitled " Gedichte ' 

 (Erlangen, 1840, and Mannheim, 1847); he published 

 nothing on the morphology of plants, although he is 

 justly regarded as one of its discoverers. Charged by 

 Prince Maximilian of Bavaria, in 1842, to make a sur- 

 vey of the Bavarian Alps and the Palatinate, he made 

 no report, and finally was confined in an asylum, at 

 Schwetzingen, where he died the 2ist of December, 

 1867. 



There is no doubt that Schimper was a well gifted 

 man. Without publishing a word, he left, as a botan- 

 ist, a reputation of a high order, and he influenced 

 both Alexander Braun and Agassiz to a great extent, 

 possessing more imagination and original ideas than 

 either of them. " II n'a manque a Schimper que 

 d'etre sobre," one of those who knew him best once 

 said to me. 



Among the visitors attracted by curiosity to the 

 "Hotel des Neuchatelois," during the summer of 1842, 

 was a great manufacturer of Mulhausen, M. Daniel 

 Dollfus-Ausset. Such an enthusiast of high regions, of 

 glaciers, and of the glacial question, has rarely existed. 

 He was so fascinated by all that he saw on the glacier 

 p 



