278 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



of valuable material for future study. In 1876 Hildebrandt went from 

 Zanzibar to Kilimandjaro and Ndur Kenia; Sachs visited Venezuela 

 in order to study the habits of electrical fishes, and the results of his 

 studies were published by Du Bois Eeymond and Nitsch. Fritsch in 

 1878 was sent to Micronesia to study the rapidly vanishing native races 

 and gather as many as possible of the memorials of their habits and 

 customs. He spent a year in Jaluit, visited several of the smaller 

 islands, then went to New Zealand and New Guinea, and in 1882 

 brought back to Berlin many thousands of the specimens he had been 

 sent out to obtain. In 1883 Guessfeldt went to the Andes, Arning to 

 Hawaii, and the next year Schweinfurth was sent to examine the desert 

 between the Nile and the Bed Sea and report its geodetic and geograph- 

 ical conditions. In 1889 nearly 25,000 Marks were voted to Hensen in 

 aid of an expedition he was preparing to send to Bio Janeiro for the 

 study of sea life. Several naturalists accompanied him. He discov- 

 ered what he called planktons, from which, according to a report made 

 to the academy in 1890, sea life is sustained. To this expedition the 

 king gave 70,000 Marks and other private gifts brought the amount 

 up to 105,000 Marks. Between the years 1890 and 1898, Volkens was 

 sent to Kilimandjaro to study botany; the zoologist von Voelzhow to 

 Madagascar, and Platte, in the interest of the same science, to the 

 coasts of Chili; Fritsch to New Zealand; the geologist Moericke to 

 the Chilian Andes, and the geographer Dove to Africa. 



Thus the academy has kept itself in close touch with all recent move- 

 ments in science, as well as with the advance in literary or historical 

 studies. It has not hesitated to begin work which must take a genera- 

 tion to finish, and of which few of its living members can hope to see 

 the results. Intimately connected with the universities, many of its 

 members, professors in the University of Berlin, enjoying the respect 

 and favor of the reigning sovereign, embracing in its ranks some of the 

 foremost men in science, philosophy and history now living, it has 

 naturally become a center around which the best men of Germany have 

 gathered, and to which the eyes of students, wherever they live, are 

 constantly turning. 



