40 I'llOCKEDlNGS or Till!; 



marine animals, llaeckel liad many great teachers, but Johannes 

 Miiller infUieiiced him more (lian any of Lliein. 



In 1855 JIaeekel returned to Wiirzbnrg to get on with his 

 medical studies, much against his inclination, hut in 1856 he 

 manai;etl to get to Nice along with Kiilliiver ajid otliers tor further 

 marine investigations, lie afterwards returiu'd home to Berlin 

 to ))rei)are his dissertation for the doctorate, whicii was on a piece 

 of zoologic-il work, ' J^e felis ([uihuschim Astaci iluviiit ills.' On 

 ol)taining liis degree he was sent hy his father to A'ienna— a safe 

 distance from the sea — where he walked the hospitals, and managed 

 to pass the State examination in Medicine in 1858. IJe was now 

 qualified to practise, and he settled in Berlin so as to have access 

 to Johannes iMiiller's laboratory. Unfortunately, Miiller's sudden 

 death upset all Haeckel's plans, but lie began to practise, and not 

 wanting to be disturbed in his zoological work by too many 

 patients, he fixed his consulting hours from 5 to 6 a.m. ! The 

 result was that during a whole year he had only three patients, 

 and none of tiiem died. " This success was enough for my dear 

 father," says Haeckel, and the old man consented to his son . 

 having one more year to seriously study marine animals. Early 

 in 1859 Haeckel reached Italy, travelling slowly and sketching as 

 he w'ent along, lie reached Sicily in the autumn, and settled 

 down at Messina for six months to the study of the Kadiolaria. 

 On this journey he discovered his talent for landscape painting, 

 and was nearly diverted from zoology to live the life of an 

 artis*t. 



In 1861 Haeckel was still depending on allowances from his 

 father, and something had to be done ; so he went to Jena to see 

 his old friend Gegenbaur, who was now occupying the Chair of 

 Zoology there. By his advice he settled in Jena as a Privat- 

 docent. In the following year he was appointed Extraordinary 

 Professor of Zoology, and published his first monograph on the 

 Tlaciiolaria ; and in that year, too, he married his cousin Anna 

 Sethe. In 1865 a special Chair of Zoology was founded for him 

 at Jena ; and though he received many invitations to fill other 

 Chairs of Zoology, he made Jena his home for the rest of 

 Ins life. 



Haeckel read the ' Origin of Species ' in 1860, after his return 

 from Messina, in a German translation bv Br<mn. The book 

 " profoundly moved '' him. He was not long in accepting Darwin's 

 views against the immutability of species, and planned the classi- 

 fication of the Hadiolaria on lines of evolution, and also constructed 

 a genealogical tree, llaeckel was the first to champion the cause 

 of Uarwinism in Germany against the sti'ongest opposition. He 

 became an enthusiastic evolutionist and devotee of Darwinism, 

 which thoroughly permeated all his teaching and all his writings. 



In 1864 his wife died, and in order to assuage his grief he 

 wrote his ' Generelle jMor|)liologie ' (1866), bearing the sub-tirle 

 • (ieneral elements of the science of organic forms, mechanically 

 grounded on the theory of descent as reformed by (.'liarles 



