SKETCH OF CARL VOGT. 119 



are simply functions of the cerebral substance. It was condemned 

 by the ecclesiastics and was the subject of controversies in the 

 German universities. On one of his journeys his attention was 

 drawn, by witnessing the operation of the fishermen, to the Bay 

 of Villafranca as a suitable station for zoological research. He 

 fixed a laboratory there and set down to work. In a short time he 

 was invited by Liebig to return to Giessen as professor of geology. 

 The officials at Darmstadt, recollecting his revolutionary proclivi- 

 ties, opposed and delayed his confirmation, bringing all manner of 

 objections against him, and among them that he had opposed von 

 Buch and ridiculed his theories. Yon Buch, however, attested to 

 his fitness for the position; Humboldt recommended him, and he 

 was appointed in December, 1846, and took his position in April, 

 1847. He delivered and published his inaugural address, On the 

 Present Condition of the Descriptive Sciences; translated Desor's 

 Geological Excursions; published his Ocean and Mediterranean; 

 and had just completed the arrangement of his Zoological Labora- 

 tory when the revolutions of 1848 broke out. He was chosen to 

 represent Giessen at the Congress of Deputies, or Vor Parlament, 

 which met at Frankfort, March 31st, and again at the German Par- 

 liament, of May 18th. He wrote vigorous articles for the liberal 

 journals; and when the Parliament was driven to Stuttgart in May, 

 1849, he was named one of the five regents of the empire, to whom 

 discretionary powers were given. When Stuttgart was placed under 

 siege he retired to Bern, where, as a member of the Committee of 

 Assistance, he succored political refugees of all countries. When 

 the throng of refugees had thinned out, Professor Vogt made another 

 sojourn at Villafranca and published studies of the siphonophores 

 and tunicates or salpse, issued two or three political satires under 

 scientific disguises, translated the Vestiges of Creation, and published 

 the Zoologische Brief e, a book which became a necessity to students. 

 In March, 1852, M. A. Tourte, Superintendent of Public In- 

 struction in Geneva, offered Professor Vogt the chair of botany in 

 the academy there. The offer was declined, botany not being a 

 specialty of Vogt's, and he was offered geology and paleontology 

 with embryology. He made himself felt in the life and fortunes of 

 the city, and rendered valuable service to Geneva and Switzerland. 

 He was consulted as a geological expert in the building of the rail- 

 roads of the country; was interested in the first conception of the 

 St. Gothard Tunnel, which was pierced years afterward under the 

 direction of another Genevan; he assisted in the foundation of the 

 National Institute of Science, Letters, Pine Arts, and Agriculture, 

 and was its president for a quarter of a century; he sat at different 

 times, twenty-one years in all, in the Grand Council of the Canton 



