22 Prof. Ernst Haeckel 



the Saale River, or wandering over Europe, Asia, or Africa 

 as the knight-errant of Science, or defending her latest ac- 

 quisitions against retrogrades and Philistines in the scien- 

 tific assemblies of Germany and Europe, and finally receiv- 

 ing their honors. 



He was born at Potsdam, near Berlin, February 16, 1834, 

 within a day of the anniversary of the martyrdom of Bruno 

 (February 17, 1600) and two years after the death of 

 Goethe, who is still remembered as the presiding genius 

 of the Saale Valley of Jena and the neighboring Weimar. 

 Haeckel's chief characteristic we may say inheritance 

 as a child seems to have been a love of nature, which justi- 

 fied his being called a German Linnaeus. His love of flow- 

 ers began in the cradle. When but twelve years of age, we 

 are told, he was quite a botanist, and had collected two 

 herbariums one official, in which he had placed what were 

 then called typical forms, all carefully labeled as sepa- 

 rate and distinct species, while in the other, a secret one, 

 were placed the " bad kinds," presenting a long series of 

 specimens transitional from one good species to another. 

 Such discoveries were at that time the forbidden fruits of 

 knowledge, which, in leisure hours, were his secret delight 

 a delight which grew from year to year. 



While at the Gymnasium, or high school, he prepared a 

 botanical work for publication. At the university he de- 

 termined to enter upon the medical profession as the open 

 gateway to the secrets of nature. As a student he seems 

 to have enjoyed rare advantages. Under the distinguished 

 professors Kolliker and Leydig he studied physiology and 

 anatomy at Wurzburg, and then under Prof. Johannes 

 Miiller at Berlin, an instructor to whom he gives generous 

 meed of praise as his great teacher for in this tone he feel- 

 ingly refers to him in his reply to, or rather duel with, the 

 celebrated physiologist Rudolph Virchow in 1878. Whereof 

 he then spoke he must have known well, for he was also 

 the student and assistant of this same redoubtable Rudolph 

 Virchow, and apparently a favorite of his, until his course 

 of preparatory medical studies closed. At their conclusion 

 we find him settling down as a practicing physician at Ber- 

 lin in 1858. 



But it was evident to his instructors and friends, and 

 finally to himself, that he was called by nature to, let us 

 say, a different rather than a higher work for can there be 

 a higher than the worthy practice of medicine ? As early 



