244 HAECKEL 



a modern State. Haeckel visited him twice at 

 Down. On February 12, 1882, he sent Darwin 

 his congratulations on his seventy-third birthday 

 from the summit of Adam's Peak in Ceylon. 

 This was his last greeting. Darwin died two 

 months afterwards. There was a touch of 

 romance in this last communication of the two 

 great warriors. On the summit of the mountain, 

 almost as sharp as a needle, and 2,500 yards above 

 the Indian Ocean, a tiny temple of Buddha hangs 

 like a stork's nest suspended by chains. Buddha 

 is believed to have left his footprints on the rocks 

 here. The Mohammedan tradition, however, says 

 it was done by Adam as he stood on one foot and 

 bemoaned the loss of Paradise. In front of this 

 holy trace, a depression in the rock about a foot 

 long, Haeckel made a speech to his travelling 

 companions, and they broke the neck of a bottle 

 of Rhine wine to Darwin's health. It is no little 

 stretch of humanity's pilgrimage, from Adam to 

 Buddha and on to Darwin. 



In October, 1866, Haeckel had a companion in 

 a teacher from Bonn, Richard G-reeS (afterwards 

 professor of zoology at Marburg). They took ship 

 from London to Lisbon, where they were long 

 detained for quarantine, though the annoyance 

 was somewhat relieved by the discovery of an 

 interesting medusa in the brackish water of the 

 Tagus. They then went to Madeira and Teneriffe, 

 not right into the tropics, but where they might 

 get a breath of it, as it were. Two of Haeckel's 

 pupils, who both became well known afterwards, 



