218 JOURNAL OF SCIENCE. 
Last November he had the pleasure of receiving a visit from 
Sir John Hall, when he was again able to indulge in New Zea- 
land reminiscences ; and his letter telling me of this meeting is 
full of delight at having thus once more come in contact with an 
eminent colonist of these far-off Islands, for which he had such 
great affection. 
Although his health continued seriously to decline, he worked 
constantly, besides his other official duties, at two papers, of 
which the copies sent to me arrived shortly before the telegraphic 
news of his death reached New Zealand. The first treats of 
Mexican relics discovered by him in the Ambrose collection in 
Tyrol. Amongst them is the battle-axe of Montezuma, and a 
feather standard which also belonged most probably to that 
unfortunate monarch. They were sent with many other objects 
by Ferdinand Cortez to the Emperor Charles the Fifth, who in 
his turn presented them to his brother, Arch-Duke Ferdinand, 
the founder of that celebrated Ambrose collection from which, 
by direction of the Emperor Francis Joseph, all the principal 
ethnological and mineralogical objects had been selected by 
Hochstetter for removal to the New Imperial Museum in Vienna. 
The second paper, Das K. K. Hof Mineralien Cabinet, read 
at the meetings of the Imperial Geological Institute of Vienna 
on February 5th and 13th of this year gives a most instructive 
account of the contents of the celebrated Imperial mineralogical 
collection, with Hochstetter’s plans of exhibiting it in the new 
building. 
At last, in the middle of March, he was compelled to take to 
his bed, owing to disease having set in in one of his feet. The. 
last letter I received from him before the telegraphic announce- 
ment of his death arrived here is dictated on the 4th of April, 
when already three weeks in bed, to his son Arthur, who, as he 
proudly informs me, has just passed his first medical examination 
(Rigorosum) with distinction ; but Hochstetter writes still most 
hopefully, giving an account of the present state of the Museum 
buildings—that the rooms for the zoological collections are 
ready so that the show cases can be placed in them, while the 
rooms for the geological, mineralogical, and paleontological 
series can only be used next autumn, and that already fifty of 
the large oil paintings are finished. Healso wished photographs 
and sketches for the artist, who has been commissioned to paint 
a panoramic view of Milford Sound. These of course I sent at 
once, but they would just arrive when my friend had closed his 
eyes for ever. 
At the end of June I received a letter from my friend, Dr. 
Otto Finsch, who had visited Hochstetter in May, and who tells 
me that the real cause of his disease had now been pronounced 
as diabetes, and that there was not the least hope of his recovery ; 
the telegram received here from London on the 21st of July 
unfortunately confirming that statement. 
I had thus given up all hope of hearing again from my poor 
friend, when in the beginning of this month (August) a letter of 
