186 HAECKEL 



name was given at Yillefranche, near Nice, in 

 April, 1864. This medusa had '' a fairy-like appear, 

 ance " to its discoverer ; its tentacles hung down 

 *^ like a mass of blond hair ! " A note to the name 

 tells us that it was given ^^ in memory of my dear, 

 never-to-be-forgotten wife, Anna Sethe. If it is 

 given to me to do something during my earthly 

 pilgrimage for science and humanity, I owe it 

 for the most part to the blessed influence of my 

 gifted wife, who was torn from me by a premature 

 end in 1864." In the Art-forms in Nature, 

 Haeckel's work of 1899, we find a medusa Des- 

 monevia Annasetlie similarly — after thirty-five 

 years — apostrophised: ''The specific name of this 

 pretty disco-medusa, one of the most beautiful and 

 interesting of all the medusae, immortalises the 

 memory of Anna Sethe, the gifted and refined wife 

 (born 1835, died 1864) to whom the author of 

 this work owes the happiest years of his life.'* 



If one would fathom the depths of human 

 emotion one must reflect what these words, in 

 such a context, contain; it is the last gentle 

 vibration of a most deep inner experience break- 

 ing out into this prosaic, scientific material. A 

 medusa is a trivial, possibly a funny thing, to 

 the layman. The man of science looks deeper 

 into it, and sees a wonderful revelation of nature ; 

 the eye of Goethe's God shines on him from it. 

 But when he has devoted years to the most 

 careful study of it, it assumes also a naive indi- 

 vidual interest for him, as the companion of his 

 solitary hours of observation in the heart of 



