'832 KARL ERNST VON BAER. 



research during two-thirds of a century. The opening and closing 

 scenes of liis life were closely connected ; fur at Dorpat, in the early 

 days of the University (1810-14), he received his collegiate education 

 and his doctor's diploma, and there he retired to devote the quiet decline 

 of his old age to his favorite studies, interrupted only by his death, Nov. 

 28, 1876. Although he graduated as a physician, he left the university 

 at twenty-one years of age with a strong bent for natural history, strength- 

 ened by the influence of the botanist. Professor Ledebour, and the 

 phjrsiologist, Burdach. But to the naturalist in those days, unless fortune 

 had made him independent, no path was open except that of medicine. 

 The study of disease, with its accompanying branches of comparative 

 anatomy and physiology, was the indirect road to the study of nature. 

 Yet the young Von Baer struggled manfully with his predilection, and 

 on his way to Vienna where he went to acquire practical familiarity with 

 his profession, though keen to observe every thing of interest, he himself 

 tells us tliat he avoided collections, as he would have done "a consuming 

 fire." At Vienna, he tried, by throwing himself with new ardor into his 

 professional work, to forget his passion for natural history. To this ob- 

 ject, however, his excursions in the neighborhood, on which he allowed 

 himself to botanize and geologize a little, were by no means favorable. 

 On one of these rambles, somewhere in the environs of Salzburg, he 

 fell in with Martius, the botanist, and this chance meeting proved a 

 turning point in his career. Martius told him to go and study with 

 Dollinger at Wiirzburg, and gave him as an introduction a package of 

 mosses to be delivered to him. One of the most pleasing passages in 

 his autobiography is that in which he describes himself as coming full 

 of hope into the presence of the professor ; handing the package, and 

 stating at the same time his desire to attend his course on comparative 

 anatomy. "I do not lecture on comparative anatomy this term," an- 

 swered Dollinger, in the quiet, slow manner peculiar to him, at the same 

 time opening the package and examining the mosses. As the young man 

 stood for a moment silent and bewildered in his disappointment, the 

 professor looked up again and said, " Why lectures ? Bring an animal 

 and dissect it here, and then another." The difficulty was solved. The 

 young student appeared the next morning with a case of instruments 

 and a leech purchased at an apothecary's shop. From that time, his 

 table was in the laboratory of Dollinger, who was not slow to recog- 

 nize in his new pupil a naturalist of the first order. A true teacher, 

 Dollinger was lavish of his intellectual capital, giving to his pupils 

 with generous disregard of his own scientific riglits, the results of his 

 original and unpublished investigations. His unselfishness was appre- 



