240 HAECKEL 



at the gate to all the glories of the tropics, 

 there is an island, Teneriffe, that was counted 

 one of "the isles of the blest " in the old Eoman 

 days. A huge volcano rises from it, and on its 

 flanks we find all the zones of the geography of 

 plants, as in a model collection. Humboldt has 

 given us a splendid description of it, as the first 

 station of his voyage to the tropics. " The man 

 who has some feeling for the beauty of Nature/' 

 he says, " will find a more powerful restorative 

 than climate on this lovely island. No place in 

 the world seems to me better calculated to banish 

 sorrow and restore peace to an embittered soul." 

 Haeckel went there. 



It was not an expensive journey, but it came as 

 a fresh greeting from Nature. It was a new ocean 

 after the long studies on the Mediterranean. 

 What might it not afford in the way of medusae 

 and other zoological prizes when the general 

 beauty of the landscape, that had enchanted 

 Humboldt, had been fully enjoyed. With a 

 mingling of his overflowing passion for Nature, and 

 the gloomy fatalism that told him this would be 

 his " last voyage " after his " last book," he asked 

 permission to leave Jena in the autumn of 1866, 

 when the printing of the Morphology was com- 

 pleted, and set out. It was no more to be his 

 last voyage than the Morphology to be his last 

 testament. Although still subdued with resigna- 

 tion in his inner life, he came home in the spring 

 of 1867 with a new elasticity of body and mind, 

 restored by the influence of the palms and bananas 



