KARL ERNST VON BAER. 331 



Faraday, Mellon!, Magnus, the two Roses, Mitscherlich, Regnault, and 

 a host of others, is written in its pages, and a large proportion of the 

 translations from foreiijn lansjuaores were the work of the editor alone. 

 After fifty years of his unassuming labor, Poggendorff's friends united 

 in contributing to a " Jubelband," or jubilee volume, in honor of the 

 anniversary of his connection with the " Annalen ; " and a goodly tome 

 filled with oriirinal memoirs marked the besinning of the second half- 

 century of his life-work. A short time before his death, Poggendorff 

 sought to give the "Annalen" a still wider range of usefulness by the 

 occasional publication of " Beibliitter," or supplements, containing brief 

 abstracts of the work of foreign investiojators. The first number of this 

 supplement appeared only a few days before his death. It might well 

 be thought that the superintendence of the "Annalen" would be 

 work enough for one man. But Poggendorff found time for original 

 researches in several branches of physics, chiefly in electricity and 

 magnetism. We owe to him the invention of the method of measuring 

 small angular variations by means of a plane-mirror telescope and scale, 

 now in constant use. To chemistry he contributed the method of indi- 

 rect analysis, which is frequently of great value. The list of his pub- 

 lished papers embraces more than one hundred and thirty titles. In 

 1863, he published, in two large volumes, the well-known " Biographisch- 

 literarisches Handworterbuch zur Geschichte der exacten Wissenchaf- 

 ten," — the worthy forerunner of the noble work of the Royal Society, 

 and in itself a monument of careful labor. In Berlin, Poggendortf 

 was surrounded by a circle of warmly attached friends. He was him- 

 self the type of the German scientist. Of unusual discrimination and 

 critical ability, — laborious, jjatient, untiring, — he worked in his own 

 vocation for nearly sixty years " without haste and without rest." Per- 

 sonally, he was kindly, genial, and hospitable, perfectly free from osten- 

 tation, with the heartiest sympathy for the student of science, and 

 the most cordial ajjpreciation of the work of others. On the 24th of 

 January last, in his eighty-first year, he died, leaving a name honored 

 wherever science is honored, cherished and loved by all who knew the 

 man. 



KARL ERNST A^ON BAER. 



Karl Ernst Von Baer was born the 29th Feb., 1792, at Piep, the 

 estate of his father in Esthonia, and died at Dorpat, aged eighty-four. 

 It was a long life devoted to intellectual work, and, though it included 

 active periods of travel and exploration, its most memorable events be- 

 long to the laboratory and are to be found in the annals of scientific 



