SKETCH OF CARL VOGT. 117 



entered the laboratory of Liebig as a medical student. The system 

 pursued there was a novel one in those days. The pupil was given 

 a task to perform, and was left to himself to work out his own way 

 and solve the problem as best he might. The next morning the 

 students were called upon to describe what they had done and what 

 they had discovered. A company of bright young men, who after- 

 ward became famous in science, was then collected around Liebig's 

 tables, and Yogt formed strong friendships with some of them. 

 During this period of study with Liebig the elder Yogt accepted a 

 professorship in Bern, Switzerland, and removed thither. 



Carl Vogt had completed his first memoir, on the "Water of the 

 Amnios at Different Periods of Foetal Life (published in 1837), and 

 was still thinking of no other career than that of chemistry, when 

 he gave shelter to a law student who had been implicated in a plot 

 against the Government, and kept him in his room till the search 

 for him became dangerous. The student was sent away in one direc- 

 tion and Vogt sought refuge with his uncle Bose, forester to the 

 Grand Duke at Jugenheim. The Grand Duke himself was enjoy- 

 ing a holiday on the estate with a prince of Prussia. Vogt borrowed 

 a forester's uniform and engaged in the chase along with their High- 

 nesses' huntsmen, while the police were searching for him everywhere 

 except within the private domain of the sovereign. The princes 

 returned to their courts, and Vogt, skillfully eluding the guards of 

 the Rhine, escaped to Strasburg and thence to Bern. 



Vogt interested himself in Strasburg in visiting the hospitals, 

 where he found many political refugees, and in studying at the 

 libraries and museums zoology and fossil forms till his father called 

 him to Bern to assist him. With his natural taste for surgery 

 went a sensitive nature which could not bear to witness the pain 

 attendant upon operations in those days before anaesthetic and other 

 humane appliances were introduced. He took up other branches 

 and became a pupil of Prof. G. Valentin, author of the present 

 physiological theory of the nerves and organs of the senses. He 

 received his degree with honor at twenty-one years of age, and locked 

 his diploma in a trunk which was deposited in the garret. He was 

 proud, however, when his two completed memoirs on the Nerves of 

 Reptiles won the praises of Karl Ernst von Bauer and of Hum- 

 boldt. They were based upon a collection of American reptiles 

 which Humboldt had left at Valentin's institute. 



Louis Agassiz, a frequent visitor at Wilhelm Vogt's, wanted 

 Carl in 1838 to assist him at !Neufchatel, but was introduced to 

 Edouard Desor, then seeking employment, and took him. Carl fol- 

 lowed a few months afterward. Agassiz, interested in the study of 

 fresh-water fishes and living and fossil echinoderms, had fitted up 



