HAECKEL: HIS LIFE, WORK, AND COMPANIONS 77 
In compliance with his father’s wish he then entered 
on the practice of medicine. But his heart was with his 
zoological studies ; and to gain time to follow them up, it 
is said his hours for consultation were fixed at from five to 
six o’clock in the morning. During the whole year in 
which he was a medical practitioner, he had but three 
patients ; not one of whom died under his earnest attention. 
‘In the same year Haeckel was betrothed to his cousin Anna 
Sethe. 
From January, 1859, to April, 1860, Haeckel lived and 
studied in Italy. There is an old saw that Italy is charm- 
ing in books, but one should never go there. That, how- 
ever, was not Haeckel’s experience. On every side he 
found there abundant means of enjoyment. He was 
pleased with the Italian people ; and says that the charm- 
ing scenery of Sicily nearly seduced him to turn landscape 
painter. But an artistic temperament is the exclusive 
privilege of no one class. Here and there one of every 
class inherits that endowment. Haeckel was blessed with 
it. His house is a gallery of water-colors, his own handy- 
work ; anda number of his sketches have been published in 
Germany as ‘‘ Travel Pictures.’’ His son, too, has suc- 
ceeded to his father’s skill, and is a professional artist. 
Much of Haeckel’s time was spent at Messina, then so 
beautiful, since, alas! so desolate. ‘To him the sublime 
beauty of that Strait exceeded that of the Bay of Naples. 
As one of Haeckel’s biographers says : ‘‘ That isa land of 
ancient myths. The Cyclops hammer their work in Etna. 
Seyla and Charybdis lurk in the Strait. In the days of 
Homer, when the sun of civilization rested on a corner of 
Asia, a dim Munchausen world was lived there.’ More- 
over it was at Messina, that by his thorough study of the 
radiolaria, Haeckel laid the foundation of his fame. 
The radiolaria are microscopic forms of life encased in 
shells of rarebeauty. The shells are siliceous in substance, 
have projecting radiating spines, and are pierced with 
