BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 59 



studies and about my chemical idea. He said if chemistry 

 and morphology went hand in hand that it would be a great 

 thing to have discovered it, and he seemed immensely pleased 

 at the idea, saying that those who favored chemistry could 

 employ this means for classification, etc." 



Miss Abbott promised to send Drude various specimens 

 of American plants, particularly the ocotilla and other Mex- 

 ican flora which she had studied, and they parted on the 

 friendliest terms. 



From Dresden she went to Leipsic. She presented to 

 Professor Johannes Wislecenus a letter of introduction with 

 which she had been provided by Professor Ladenburg. She 

 found him "a large, tall man with silver-gray hair." He re- 

 ceived her at once in his study, and informed her that it 

 would be impossible to offer her a place in his laboratory, as 

 it was already very much crowded with men-students, and it 

 was altogether against the rules to admit women. She was 

 rather disgusted at the way in which he advised her to go to 

 Zurich : "the way all women are shoved to Zurich," seemed 

 to her " like the last stage of investigation which only pushes 

 the problem of life so far back without removing the veil." 

 He told her that it might be possible for her to attend the 

 lectures, but that that "depended entirely upon the wishes of 

 each professor and the exercise of individual right." However, 

 he gave her a card of introduction to Dr. Ernest von Meyer, 

 who he thought might be willing to take her into his private 

 laboratory. Then without offering to show her his private 

 laboratory, he turned her over to the tender mercies of an as- 

 sistant who had general charge of his fifty students, to show 

 her around the institution. Professor Wislecenus, when a 

 young man, had been chemical assistant at Yale. She was 

 impressed with "the great scale on which the laboratories 

 were run," but she found comparatively few new or origi- 

 nal pieces of apparatus; and her experience led her to the 

 conclusion, that though the accommodation for the training 

 of chemical graduates is immense, there was not much chance 

 of obtaining the best education rapiflly in these large univer- 

 sities. She says : 



