ADELBERT VON CH AMIS SO AS A NATURALIST. 263 



earlier studies to devote his later efforts to making this field of 

 linguistic research cultivable. He undertook to learn the Ha- 

 waiian language from the books which he had at hand, and as- 

 signed himself the task of preparing a grammar and dictionary 

 of it. 



We have thus gone around the circle of Chamisso's scientific 

 work. From a profusion of single observations, remarks, and 

 experiments only a small part of his peculiar activity can be illus- 

 trated here. Considering his activity as a whole, it must be con- 

 ceded that his strength did not lie in the direction of strict theo- 

 retical analysis. This is not to be wondered at if we consider 

 the condition of theoretical science in Germany at the time, when 

 it was just beginning to recover from its enervating entanglement 

 with philosophy. But the characteristic and really remarkable 

 feature of Chamisso's scientific activity is his power of embracing 

 the whole world of phenomena with the same love, freshness, and 

 elasticity from the stone that rung under his geological ham- 

 mer; the hay, as he modestly named his dried favorites; the sea- 

 worm, which revealed to him one of its most wonderful mys- 

 teries ; to that noblest production of Nature, as man represents 

 himself to objective research, whether considered as a single 

 being related to the animals, as a tool-making, fire-using, social 

 creature, or, in his highest expression of speech. With sound, 

 lively sense, with always ready energy, Chamisso stands before 

 the things of Nature, exercises unreservedly every kind of obser- 

 vation, and forms his conceptions without prepossession and with 

 strict limitation to the actually known. He was thus, although 

 his monographs may have been overtaken or his general views 

 have fallen behind those of the present day, a complete naturalist 

 in the best sense of the word, and that at a time when such men 

 had to be looked for through Germany as with a candle. 



Many of those who go by his marble image in the future will 

 recall " Peter Schlemil," u Schloss Boncourt," and Salas y Gomez. 

 A few will think of the botanist and ethnologist Chamisso, of 

 the salpse and the coral islands. Greeting from their inmost 

 hearts the few will bow to him who like him, in an iron age, and 

 in the midst of the striving after the real, have kept in disposi- 

 tion, fancy, and spirit a place for all that is of man, for the ideal, 

 and the beautiful. Translated for The Popular Science Monthly 

 from the Deutsche Rundschau. 



