DARWIN AND HUMBOLDT, 



[341] 37 



he might turn his steps in whatever 

 direction he chose. Never before had 

 any government organized an ex- 

 pedition with so little regard to pure- 

 ly utilitarian considerations. 



This second great journey of Hum- 

 boldt is connected with a hope and 

 disappointment of my own. I was 

 then a student in Munich. That 

 University had opened under the 

 most brilliant auspices. Almost every 

 name on the list of professors was 

 also prominent in some department 

 of science or literature. They were 

 not men who taught from text-books 

 or even read lectures made from ex- 

 tracts of original works. They were 

 themselves original investigators, 

 daily contributing to the sum of 

 human knowledge. Martius, Oken, 



DoLLINGER, ScHELLING, Fr. VON 



Baader, Wagler, Zuccarini, Fuchs, 

 Vogel, von Kobell, were our teach- 

 ers. And they were not only our 

 teachers but our friends. The best 

 spirit prevailed among the professors 

 and students. We were often the 

 companions of their walks, often 

 present at their discussions, and when 

 we met for conversation or to give 

 lectures among ourselves, as we con- 

 stantly did, our professors were often 

 among our listeners, cheering and 

 stimulating us in all our efforts after 

 independent research. 



My room was our meeting-place, — 

 bedroom, study, museum, library, 

 lecture-room, fencing room, — all in 

 one. Students and professors used 

 to call it the little Academy. Here 

 Schimper and Braun for the first 

 time discussed the laws of phyllo- 

 taxis, that marvelous rhythmical 

 arrangement of the leaves in plants 

 which our great mathematician in 

 Cambridge has found to agree with 

 the periods of the rotation of our 

 planet. Among their listeners were 

 Professors Martius and Zuccarini ; 

 and even Robert Brown, while in 

 Munich, during a journey through 

 Germany, sought the acquaintance of 

 these young botanists. Here for the 

 first time did Michahelles lay before 

 us the results of his exploration of the 



Adriatic and adjoining regions. Here 

 Born exhibited his wonderful pre- 

 parations of the anatomy of the 

 Lamper-Eel. Here Rudolphi made 

 us acquainted with his exploration of 

 the Bavarian Alps and the shores of 

 the Baltic. These my fellow-students 

 in Munich were a bright, promising 

 set, — boys then in age, many of whom 

 did not live to make their names 

 famous in the annals of science. It 

 was in our little Academy that 

 Dollinger, the great master in 

 physiology and embryology, showed 

 to us, his students, before he had 

 even given them to the scientific 

 world, his wonderful preparations 

 exhibiting the vessels of the villosities 

 of the alimentary canal ; and here he 

 taught us the use of the microscope 

 in embryological investigation. And 

 here also the great German anatomist, 

 Meckel, came to see my collection 

 of fish skeletons, of which he had 

 heard from Dollinger. Such as- 

 sociations, of course, made us ac- 

 quainted with everything of import- 

 ance which was going on in the 

 scientific world. The preparations 

 of Humboldt for his Asiatic journey 

 excited our deepest interest, and I 

 was filltd with a passionate desire to 

 accompany the expedition as an 

 assistant. 



General La Harpe, then residing 

 in Lausanne, who had been the 

 preceptor of both the Emperors 

 Alexander and Nicholas of Russia, 

 and who knew Humboldt personally, 

 was a friend of my family, and he 

 wrote to Humboldt in my behalf, ask- 

 ing that I might join the expedition 

 as an assistant. But it was not to be. 

 The preparations for the journey 

 were already made, and Ehrenberg 

 and Gustav Rose, then professors at 

 the University of Berlin, were to be 

 his traveling companions. I should 

 not mention the incident here, but 

 that, slight as it was, it marks the 

 beginning of my personal relation 

 with Hcmboldt. 



The incidents of Humboldt's Asi- 

 atic journey are less known to the 

 public at large than those of his longer 



