SKETCH OF OSCAR SCHMIDT. 699 



The erection of a German Empire at the conclusion of the 

 Franco-Prussian War was an occasion of proud and exultant joy to 

 Schmidt; and when, in the spring of 1872, he was elected, at the 

 instance of his friend Haeckel, a professor in the newly instituted 

 university at Strasburg, he deemed it a patriotic duty to accept. 



With his removal to Strasburg, what both Erich Schmidt and 

 Professor von Graff call the third period of Schmidt's scientific 

 career began. It was a period of undisturbed ease in his home life, 

 and was devoted chiefly to the continuation of the studies of the 

 sponges, with a few special researches, the results of which ap- 

 peared in books, on the theory of descent, fossil animals, on Hart- 

 man's theories, and on social democracy. His systematic and ana- 

 tomical labors on the sponges — the provisional conclusions of which, 

 in 1870, constituted the Grunzilge einer Spongienfauna des Atlan- 

 tisclien Gehietes (Outlines of a Sponge Eauna of the Atlantic Re- 

 gion) — were carried on. Professor von Graff says, from the point 

 of view of the development theory. Besides several smaller con- 

 tributions to the building up of the theory of descent, the most 

 important of all his works of this time is his book on the Theory 

 of Descent and Darwinism (Appletons' International Scientific Se- 

 ries) — " one of the best presentations of all the questions pertain- 

 ing to that subject, and distinguished from other similar works 

 both by the philosophical spirit with which the whole discussion is 

 carried on, and by the even consideration it gives to all the various 

 fundamental points of the principle of descent. The prominent 

 features of Schmidt's presentation appear most especially in the 

 final chapter, the subject of which is the Application of the Theory 

 of Descent to Man, which he had also previously discussed in a pub- 

 lic address. Shortly after this he reduced to absurdity, in a very 

 forcible attack on Hartman's Philosophy of the Unconscious, the 

 idea of the Social Democrats that they could use Darwinism to the 

 advantage of their Utopia, and treated the subject of the Mam- 

 malia in their Relation to Primeval Times (Appletons' Interna- 

 tional Scientific Series) most vigorously from the point of view of 

 the development theory." He also found time for special re- 

 searches on the Structure and Development of Loxosema, the Eyes 

 of Arthropods, and, still keeping up his studies of the sponges, 

 closed his more than twenty years' labors on this group with his 

 Sponges of the Gulf of Mexico, and his last scientific work — Deri- 

 vation of ISTew Species through the Decay and Atrophy of Older 

 Characteristics. The preface to the former work, Professor von 

 Graft* says, shows plainly how Schmidt, in contrast to so many fel- 

 low-laborers in the field of the theory of descent, was always cir- 

 cumspect in a high degree, and never suffered himself to be car- 



