236 SIR RODERICK I. MURCHISON'S ADDRESS. [May 23, 1859. 



knees with himself whilst we examined upon the map every recess 

 of those mountains. 



In the following year, being at Vienna when the present Emperor 

 was born, I met with marked attention from the Archduke John, 

 who was the chief of the Engineer corps ; but it was on revisiting 

 Gratz, where I had been in the previous year, that I best learnt 

 how to admire him. There it was that he had already established 

 that scientific institution, the Johanneum, in which the natural 

 history productions of the Austrian Alps were so admirably dis- 

 played, and where able men, attracted thither by the good Prince, 

 expounded the truths of geography, botany, mineralogy, and mining. 



It is enough to say that here taught and wrote my eminent 

 and valued friend Haidinger, now worthily at the head of the 

 geologists of Austria, who took a leading part in founding the 

 Imperial Geographical Society, and who is constantly affording us 

 valuable information. It was by visiting the valleys of those 

 Alps in these and subsequent years, where the industry of the 

 honest and trusty Styrian works the iron-mines, that I could still 

 better estimate the noble and disinterested character of this true- 

 hearted Austrian Prince. 



Visiting him at Frankfort in 1848, when he was Eeichs-verweser 

 of the German Confederation, and calling on him at his first and 

 only hour of leisure, six in the morning, I learnt from himself 

 that he sighed to regain those mountains amidst which I had known 

 him to be so happy. Thither he did return, and there ended his days 

 in the society of the wife of his choice, and blessed with an accom- 

 plished and promising son, the Count de Meran, now in the Aus- 

 trian army. 



The Archduke John, who had visited England and remained some 

 time in the year 1816, had a true regard for many of our country- 

 men with whom he associated ; and of those now living, I have 

 especially heard him speak in affectionate terms of that pattern of 

 an English gentleman, our associate. Sir Thomas Dyke Acland. 



As not only Austria but all Germany mourns his loss, so your 

 President, who was honoured with his friendship, has striven to 

 do honour to this virtuous and distinguished member of the Imperial 

 house of Hapsburg. 



M. Gerold Meyer, of Knonau, the noted Swiss historian and 

 geographer, who died recently, was one of our foreign Corre- 

 spondents. Being the keeper of the archives of Zurich, so rich 

 in the original documents relating to the history of Switzerland 

 from the ninth to the fifteenth centuiy, he detected letters which 



