F. R. VON HOCHSTETTER. 219 
his arrived, dated the tenth of June. It seemed to me like a 
voice from the grave ; and as this is doubtless the last direct 
news I shall receive from him, I shall give some extracts from 
thisletter,dictated to hiswife, but signed by him inhisusual way :— 
“ To-day, dearest friend, I can report to thee the arrival of 
the three cases with the Moa skeletons. Unfortunately Iam not 
able to be present at the unpacking of them, as I have been bed- 
ridden since the sixteenth of March. The beginning of the 
history of my sufferings I have told thee in my last letter. 
Though I am in the hands of the best surgeons, they cannot say 
how long the affair will last. The disease from which I have 
been suffering for the last four years and a-half has at last been 
recognised as diabetes, and as my diet has been regulated 
accordingly I feel much better, though I must lie quietly in bed 
and must not move my foot. It is now the thirteenth week that 
I have been so prostrated. Fortunately my general state of 
health is comparatively good, so that I can occupy myself and 
read, and the faithful nursing and care of my dear wife helps me 
over the rest. 
“T shall send thee soon a set of photographs taken from some 
of the principal oil paintings in ournew Museum. I would have 
done so at once, but some of the New Zealand pictures are not 
yet ready. The arrangement of the Museum has now gradually 
been begun. The botanical department on the second floor is 
already put in order. The show-cases for the zoological section 
are being placed on the first floor, and the mineralogical, geo- 
logical and ethnographical collections will be taken in hand at 
the beginning of next year. Nevertheless it will take three to 
four years more before we shall have finished. Fortunately every- 
thing is so well organised, and my young custodians and assist- 
ants are such good and reliable men, that even without my 
personal intervention on the spot everything advances perfectly 
well and satisfactorily.” “ 
The rest of the letter, of a more private nature, I necessarily 
omit; but it will be seen that Hochstetter at that time had no 
idea how very ill he was, and that he still looked hopefully 
towards the future. 
And so a good man has left this world, but his memory will 
for ever remain and be cherished in both hemispheres. His wife 
and seven children, of whom his eldest son Arthur is twenty-one 
years of age, lose in him a kind and loving husband and father; 
those who had the privilege of his intimacy, a true, affectionate, 
and devoted friend; and the world is deprived of an honest 
searcher after truth, an honourable upright man, second to none 
amongst his contemporaries. 
As for myself, while writing these lines with a heavy heart, 
and reading letter after letter for the compilation of this 
narrative, I feel more and more that this inexpressibly sad loss I 
have sustained can never be replaced. Andso let me finish this 
short and necessarily imperfect memoir of a noble, busy life with 
the words of the great German poet Goethe :— 
