CHAPTEE III 



THE RADIOLAEIA 



IN the January of 1859 Haeckel, then in his 

 twenty-fifth year, came to Italy with the 

 determination '^ to do it thoroughly." By the 

 autumn the body of the peninsula had been covered 

 down to Naples, Capri, and Ischia. The winter, 

 until April, 1860, was spent at Messina. 



There are plenty of very strenuous students, 

 later Privy Councillors as well as archaeologists 

 and zoologists, who find a year in Italy a very 

 simple matter. They arrive, make the due round 

 of sights, and then at once disappear into some 

 library or institute, burying themselves like moles 

 in some special work or other, just as they would 

 do at home. The only time you can see them is 

 over their Munich beer in the evening; and if 

 there are a number of them together they smoke 

 their cigars and sing a German student's song, as 

 they would do at home. These good folk have very 

 different dispositions behind their goggles, but they 

 have never been lit up by the fire of Goethe. They 

 "are quite content to write home like the churlish 

 Herder ; Italy is pretty enough in Goethe's writings, 



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