SKETCH OF DR. ALFRED E. BREHM. 267 



necessary to say anything of the appreciation in which it was held by 

 German-speaking people. A popular edition in three volumes was 

 published 1888 to 1872. 



During the publication of this great work, Brehm resided in Ber- 

 lin, where, as in Hamburg, he occupied himself with introducing the 

 public to the forms of life which were described in so masterly a man- 

 ner in the " Thierleben." A joint-stock company was formed, with a 

 capital of nine hundred thousand marks, for the establishment of a 

 great aquarium, of which Brehm was given the direction. The posi- 

 tion, however, did not suit him, for he found himself too closely 

 hedged up for his comfort. The establishment he founded still re- 

 mains one of the famous sights of the city, but he withdrew from it, 

 to devote himself again to his literary labors, which he varied with 

 lectures in different cities. Among his literary enterprises is a book 

 in two volumes on " Captive Birds," which was published at Leipsic 

 and Heidelberg in 1872. 



Brehm again left his country, to pursue zoological researches, in 

 187G, when at the suggestion of Dr. M. Lindermann an expedition to 

 West Siberia was organized in the Bremen Union for Arctic Explo- 

 ration, the cost of which was defrayed pai*tly by the Union and partly 

 by private contributions and the Russian merchant Michaelovich Si- 

 biriakoff. The expedition consisted of Dr. O. Finsch, Dr. A. Brehm, 

 and Count Waldburg-Zeil-Trauchburg, who joined it as a volunteer. 

 Its route extended over the Ural across the Ischim Steppe, and along 

 the Irtish to Semipalatinsk, to the Arrat Mountains, through the land 

 of the Kirghiz to the Dzungarian Ala-Tau, thence to Nor-Saissan, 

 then over the Chinese Hoch-Altai and through the Altai crownland 

 to the Obi, and lastly across the Tundra to the country of the Ostiaks 

 and Samoyeds, whence Brehm returned home by way of St. Peters- 

 burg, where he stayed a short time to deliver lectures. Reaching 

 home safely, he also delivered lectures there, upon the journey he had 

 just performed. In the same year, 1877, he accepted an invitation 

 from the Crown-Prince Rudolph of Austria, to whom he had dedi- 

 cated the second edition of his " Thierleben," to go with him on an 

 excursion to the forests of the middle Danube, of which the crown 

 pi*ince afterward published a sketch. Two years later, in 1879, he 

 accompanied the crown prince to Spain. In 1880 he, on his own ac- 

 count, visited Noi'th America to deliver lectures. This visit had an 

 unfortunate ending ; he was attacked by a violent fever ; and after 

 he returned home, having gone to Renthendorf, he was prostrated 

 with a disease of the kidneys which soon proved fatal. This prema- 

 ture ending of his life was the more deplorable, because the restless 

 naturalist was engaged on a new natural history of animals, which 

 was to have a very wide scope. In him passed away one of the 

 noblest of Germans, a man to whom the animal world was a world 

 full of spirit and inspiration. 



