SKETCH OF OSCAR SCHMIDT. 695 



life, of wliicli liis son, Ericli Sclimidt, has given, in his memorial ad- 

 dress, a most pleasant picture. " In the magnificent scenery," he 

 says, " among which he often wandered with his growing children, 

 with warm-hearted men around him, sure of the increasing affec- 

 tion and capacity of his students, he reached his culmination as a 

 naturalist and as a man. He was active in every direction. The 

 university was in a very promising period of its career. A medical 

 faculty was required, and that magnified his function. He also rep- 

 resented his department in the Johanneum, and presided over the 

 museum. He w^ent every year to Dalmatia while he was compos- 

 ing liis monograph on the sponges, and made experiments in their 

 artificial cultivation, being given one year a small war steamer at 

 his disposal. These journeys were doubly enjoyed when Franz 

 Unger went with him to Lesina or to the Ionian Islands. He and 

 the great botanist had a close community of interests, and it was 

 an inestimable privilege, during the great scientific crisis, to stand 

 shoulder to shoulder with an older man, who to power of follow- 

 ing philosophical intricacies united the habit of the most exact re- 

 search with finely trained effort and suggestive intuition. To- 

 gether the two devoted themselves to the study of Darwinism, at 

 first opposed to it, as is shown by one of Schmidt's printed essays, 

 but soon becoming impressed with the conviction that all scientific 

 progress was connected with that revolution, and finally Schmidt 

 gave all his energy to the advancement of it. As Rector Magnificus 

 — the first Protestant to wear the golden chain at an Austrian 

 university — he declared himself, in his inaugural address, for Dar- 

 winism with a resoluteness peculiar to him, and neither the silly 

 demonstrations of the theological students nor the wrath of Car- 

 dinal Rauscher could intimidate him from the vindication of free 

 investigation. . . . The rectoral year 1865-66 was also the year 

 of the Austro-Prussian "War, and he now proved that the rashly 

 progressive man to whom the whole clash of opinions was a bath 

 of steel also possessed a considerable measure of self-control. He 

 bore himself correctly in every sense in his difficult position, and, 

 without turning his back upon his native Prussia, he so completely 

 devoted himself to the care of the wounded as to receive a note of 

 thanks from the General Archduke Albrecht. Having been chosen 

 a deputy to the Landtag, his voice was always heard in favor of 

 the Liberal side. He served indefatigably in the communal coun- 

 cil and the school board. The Protestant communes depended 

 upon him as one of their most effective champions, even to the end 

 of the partisan contest. Besides all this many-sided scientific and 

 public-spirited activity, Schmidt had time to describe the lower 

 animals for Brehm's Thierlehen, and to write a number of popular 



