THE RADIOLARIA 85 



naifve unpretentiousness. For the first time he 

 felt that he was a cosmopolitan student. He had 

 never been a devotee of the student's beer-feasts. 

 He had no need of alcoholic stimulant. Gegen- 

 baur of Wiirtzburg, the insatiable smoker, once 

 said to him in joke, "If you would only smoke, 

 we might make something out of you." It was 

 done, in any case. His personal inclinations were 

 in his favour : an illimitable love of travel, good 

 spirits that rose in proportion to the absurdity of 

 his accommodation, and a simple delight in every- 

 thing human that enabled him to talk and travel 

 with the humblest as if they were his equals. He 

 spent a night with a young worker in a haystack, 

 and when he was asked what he was, he pointed 

 to his paint-box and brush: *' House-painter." 

 *'I thought so when I saw you," said the youth, 

 and he asked Haeckel to start a workshop together 

 with him, Italy was the ideal land for a visitor 

 of that type. There was no part of the world 

 from which he was so pleased to receive re- 

 cognition in his years of fame as Italy ; and he 

 received it in abundance, for the appreciation 

 was mutual. 



I will add a page here that was supplied for the 

 present work by a friendly hand, a man who is as 

 well known to thousands as Haeckel himself — 

 Hermann Allmers, "the poet of the fens, chief of 

 Frisia, and splendid fellow," as Haeckel has called 

 him. He died in the spring of 1902 at an advanced 

 age. He met Haeckel in Italy, and tells the story 

 in his verse and prose. Forty years after their 



