AVERTED INTEREST 
34i 
observations at the Flagstaff Observatory, and collect- 
ing on Maury’s plan all possible data as to the naviga- 
tion of the Southern Ocean, Dr. Neumayer took a 
prominent part on the Committee which directed the 
exploration of the interior of Australia; but in 1862 he 
once more returned to his favourite subject of Antarctic 
research. In a farewell address to his countrymen at 
Melbourne as he was leaving for Europe he said: 
“ It would be a glorious moment in the next period of 
my career if I could seek the Antarctic regions in a Ger- 
man ship, and perhaps sometime you will see me return 
to these shores accompanied by the pick of the youth of all 
German races, bound on a voyage to the South Pole.” 
So far did the coming of the Gauss cast its shadow 
before. 
Dr. Neumayer urged the practical side of Antarctic 
research ; he showed how it would increase the certainty 
of navigation, and how it would stimulate the spirit of 
maritime enterprise which, from his student days, he had 
recognised as an indispensable element of national great- 
ness. Thus he took as the theme of his first serious ap- 
peal on returning to his fatherland, at Frankfort in 1865, 
the importance of Antarctic exploration and the neces- 
sity for the foundation of a central institution for the sys- 
tematic study of oceanography and marine meteorology. 
The latter suggestion was acted on in a liberal spirit, 
and in his direction of the Deutsche Seewarte at Ham- 
burg, Dr. von Neumayer has fulfilled his life-work and 
placed his country in possession of an oceanographical 
institution of which Maury himself would have been 
proud, and which is the admiration, if not the envy, of the 
oceanographers of other countries. Not only has it 
proved of inestimable practical value to the seafarer, but 
