28 ■ President's Address. 



political demonstrations, and escaped the sad fate of many 

 fellow students. 



Tlie charming environs of Jena with its chalk hills, 

 presenting an almost southern vegetation, impressed them- 

 selves on his mind. During this time he sometimes saw 

 Goethe in Dornburg, in the enchanting parks of which the 

 great poet loved to walk, and Koch to the end of his life 

 preserved a myrtle branch which Goethe had presented to 

 bim when the former found him sitting in a rose-arbour 

 reading the poet Tasso. In 1831 Koch left Jena and 

 went to Wiirzburg to enrol himself among the pupils of 

 the celebrated physician Schonlein. In the autumn of 

 1836 he made a journey to Switzerland, and studied the 

 Flora of the Alps up to the sources of the Ehine and 

 Khone. In 1833 Koch took his degree of Doctor of 

 Medicine, his dissertation on that occasion being a mono- 

 graph on the genus Veronica, and then returned for a 

 short time to Weimar, when his father was reconciled to 

 him. He again visited Jena to take the degree of Doctor of 

 Philosophy and to become a lecturer there. In 1834 he 

 delivered his first course of lectures, which were distin- 

 guished by the absence of all pedantry and by a freshness 

 and learning which gave them a peculiar interest. His 

 excursions were not less so, and the zeal and enthusiasm 

 with which he himself was fired could not fail to make 

 themselves felt among his students. In March 1835 he 

 was appointed to a professorial chair, and having now the 

 means of gratifying his love of travel he planned his voyage 

 to the East, in the accomplishment of which he was aided 

 by the means which he had inherited on his father's death. 

 Koch, probably infiuenced by the consideration that in the 

 East had been the cradle of the human family, and that 

 there had been situated the garden of Eden, stocked with 

 every kind of fruit which could conduce to the enjoyment 

 of our first parents, determined to seek the origin of our 

 fruit trees in that locality. 



Besides his pecuniary resources he enjoyed other special 

 advantages, for Froriep and Friedrich von Miiller seconded 

 his efforts, and drew the attention of the Grand Duchess 

 Maria Paulowna to his bold undertaking. She was the 

 sister of the Emperor Nicolas, the mother of the excellent 



