ADELBERT VON CHAMISSO AS A NATURALIST. 253 



wliich lie is related to us, although too early taken away ; he only 

 belonged to us for three years. Proposed by Alexander von Hum- 

 boldt and Kunth, he became a member of the Academy in 1835 ; 

 and then was removed by death, at the age of fifty-seven years, 

 on the 31st of August, 1838, the fiftieth return of which day is to 

 be celebrated by the dedication of his monument. Unfortunately, 

 we can find only the dates concerning Chamisso's election in the 

 archives of the Academy. Still more strangely, our publications 

 contain no scientific communications from him except a paper on 

 the Hawaiian language, which was read in the general meeting of 

 January 12, 1837, in which he describes himself as an old, sick, 

 and weary man. Yet he was able to look back on twenty years 

 of busy work, during which he left distinct marks on several 

 branches of science ; and it seems fitting to me to remind the pres- 

 ent generation of some of them. 



In what ways and through what vicissitudes the French emi- 

 grant's son, Chamisso, rose and became a German poet and the 

 associate of the literary lights of his time is told in his friend 

 Hitzig's biography of him. The energy with which he pursued 

 literary art, when applied to the study of nature, laid the founda- 

 tion of a scientific career in which he became the academical 

 associate of Humboldt, Von Buch, Ehrenberg, and Johannes Mul- 

 ler ; and it is our purpose to enlarge upon this side of his life. 



Chamisso's military career ended when in 1806 he went to 

 France as a prisoner of war in consequence of Hanelin's violation 

 of his parole. He formed connections there by the influence of 

 which he received a call after he had returned to Berlin to become 

 a Professor of Greek and Latin in the lyceum about to be estab- 

 lished at Napoleon ville in La Vendee. The call proved an illu- 

 sory one, but on his second residence in France he was drawn 

 into Madame de Stael's circle, and received instruction in botany 

 from her son, August de Stael. The name of the species Staelia, 

 Cham., in the order of the Eubiacece, commemorates the excursions 

 of this pair among the rich flora of the Lake of Geneva and at 

 the foot of Mont Blanc. 



That this employment was suited to him will be evident when 

 we recollect how, when he was still a boy at Schloss Boncourt, he 

 " discovered insects, found new plants, and spent stormy nights 

 looking and meditating at his open window, and that all his plays, 

 his doings and undoings, tended to physical experiments and the 

 investigation of the laws of nature." It is, therefore, not strange 

 that he should have devoted himself with decisive earnestness to 

 his new calling. He returned to Berlin, and was matriculated in 

 his thirty-first year as a student of medicine in the newly estab- 

 lished university. He studied anatomy under the elder Knape; 

 and was not dismayed either by the dry lessons about bones which 



