1894- NEWS OF UNIVERSITIES, ETC. 237 



Ernst Haeckel, the second son of Ober-regierungsrath Carl Haeckel, was 

 born in Potsdam on February 16, 1834. He was early led to the study of nature, 

 especially of Botany, an inclination nourished by his mother, who came of the old 

 legal family of Sethe, and by his father, who himself took a keen interest in 

 Geography, and numbered among his friends the geographer Ritter and the 

 African traveller Barth. He went to school at Merseburg, whither his father had 

 removed, and continued his studies in natural science. At his father's instance, 

 however, he decided on medicine rather than pure science, as affording a surer 

 means of livelihood ; at the same time he hoped to travel as a ship's doctor, 

 and so to see distant lands. At the age of eighteen, then, he began his medical 

 studies in Berlin, but seems to have been mostly attracted by the lectures of 

 the botanist, Alexander Braun. From the autumn of 1852 till Easter of 

 1854 he attended the anatomical lectures of Kolliker and Leydig in Wiirzburg, 

 where he made friends with Gegenbaur and the present Berlin physician, Gerhard t. 

 Returning to Berlin, he went to the lectures of Johannes Miiller, which greatly 

 influenced him and determined the future course of his life. In his enthusiasm he 

 spent all his spare time in natural history excursions in the neighbourhood, holding 

 entirely aloof from the beer-drinking entertainments of his fellow-students. Autumn 

 of 1854 saw him with Johannes Miiller in Heligoland, where he obtained his first 

 impression of the sea and of the pelagic fauna, from which sprung his predilection 

 for researches on the "plankton" or floating tribes of the sea. While at Berlin, 

 Haeckel made friends with Max Schultze, Claparede, von Richthofen, von Martens 

 and others who have since attained to eminence. At Easter, 1855, he returned to 

 the then famous medical school of Wiirzburg, where, in the summer of the following 

 year he became assistant to Virchow, in whose Archiv he published one of his first 

 independent works, — " Ueber die Plexus chorioides." In the autumn of 1S56, together 

 with Miiller and Kolliker he visited the sea-fisheries of Nice, where he made his first 

 acquaintance with the Radiolaria, and discovered the movement of cells in the 

 connective tissue of Tunicates. His medical studies in Berlin were then resumed, 

 and in March, 1857, he took his degree of Doctor of Medicine, presenting before 

 Ehrenberg his Thesis " On the Tissues of the Crayfish." A summer in Vienna was 

 divided between medical work and excursions in company with the botanist Focke 

 from Bremen and the zoologist Krabbe from Copenhagen. Although in the 

 following winter he passed the State Medical examination in Berlin, yet^ 

 at the instance of Johannes Miiller, he determined henceforward to devote 

 himself to Zoology. Unfortunately, his intention of working under Miiller was 

 thwarted by the sudden death of the latter at Easter, 1858. In 1859 he went to Italy 

 and again studied the pelagic fauna of the Mediterranean, collecting materials for 

 his Monograph on the Radiolaria, which appeared in 1862. At the suggestion of 

 Gegenbaur, in 18G1, he settled in Jena, where he was soon elected Professor of 

 Zoology. In this quiet little town, amid beautiful and natural surroundings, he has 

 stayed ever since, resisting pressing invitations to go to the larger Universities of 

 Wiirzburg, Bonn, Vienna, and Strassburg. 



A change now came. After a year and a half of happy married life, his wife, 

 who was his cousin, Anna Sethe, died, and Haeckel drowned his sorrow in the most 

 intense work. Darwin's " Origin of Species," which had appeared a few years 

 before, had made a great impression on him. This he had already acknowledged 

 in his Radiolarian monograph, and now he set about his important work " Generelle 

 Morphologic," which appeared in 1866, and was the first book to view the animal 

 kingdom in its entirety from the standpoint of the dual doctrine of descent and 

 natural selection. This work completed, Haeckel went on a holiday to the Canary 

 Islands, of which we have an account in his " Besteigung des Pic von Teneriffa.' 

 On his return through London he met Hu.xley, Lyell, and Darwin himself. 



In 186S appeared another book inspired by Darwinism, his " Natiirliche Schop- 

 fungsgeschichte," which in 1889 had reached its eighth edition, and been translated 

 into twelve languages, including Malay and Japanese. This result was not, however, 

 attained without gaining for the author many enemies, and converting several warm 

 admirers into hot opponents. From these general works he turned again to mono- 



