LETTERS OF FRIEDRICH WOHLER 133 



I hope all continues to go well with you. For a long 

 time I have heard nothing from you. Here things are 

 going on well and we are trying to be good Prussians. 

 Last semester the University was attended by 1080, 

 the present one, by a little over 1000. The laboratory 

 attendance is so great that there is scarcely room left, 

 and an enlargement is being considered. I am now 76 

 years old, and no longer concern myself with the de- 

 tails of instruction and gave up lecturing some time 

 ago. I have only the general direction of the Institute. 

 H'-ibner is now the principal one lecturing, having 

 been proposed by me, and appointed professor ordi- 

 narius and assistant director of the Institute, v. Uslar 

 is head of the pharmaceutical division. I have in all 

 six assistants, every one of them indispensable. Prob- 

 ably you have heard that Fittig, my former assistant 

 whom you remember well, has become professor at 

 Tubingen. He has now received and accepted a call to 

 Strassburg to succeed Baeyer, who has been called to 

 Miinchen as Liebig's successor. 



My family are well. My eldest daughter is married 

 to Burgomaster Merkel of this place, has four daugh- 

 ters, the oldest of which is engaged to a physician, so 

 that I have good prospects of becoming a great-grand- 

 father. My youngest daughter is married in London, 

 and has three children. My son, who is an economist 

 at Rodelheim near Frankfurt, lately rejoiced in the 

 birth of a daughter, after the marriage had been 

 without issue for sixteen years. My other three 

 daughters are still single and are very likely to re- 

 main so. 



