BULLETIN OF DENISON UNIVERSITY. 
157 
upon the Rurik^ the whales, which he dreamed of taming and making 
serviceable, the sea-lions through whose bellowing herd he fearlessly 
strode on St. George’s Island. Concerning the monkeys taken on 
board of the Rurik he made profound psychological observations. 
Even the extinct animal-world did not go unnoticed : a tusk, dug up 
by Chamisso on Kotzebue Sound, was, in accordance with his draw- 
ing and description, ascribed by Cuvier in his Ossemens fossiles to the 
mammoth.” 
“He must ever be regarded as the man who, by distinguishing two 
chief divisions of the great ocean and a separate group of islands, first 
shed light upon the mixture of races inhabiting the island-world. The 
present division into Micronesia and Polynesia * * was substantially 
made known by him. * * * In the north also Chamisso gave valuable 
hints concerning the relationship of the Asiatic Tchuktchis and the 
American Esquimos.” 
If the celebrated saying of Charles V. is trustworthy, that one is 
as many times a man as he knows languages, then Chamisso was a 
man many times over. His native tongue was always available and 
was resorted to for many practical, everyday purposes ; papers on 
scientific subjects were occasionally written in French; he used it 
also in counting, and in making the first prose sketch of a poem, which 
was taking shape in his mind and demanding expression. His last 
important literary labor was the translation from the French of Beren- 
ger, his favorite poet, and French was the tongue in which he spoke 
during the long delirium that preceeded his death. He shared the in- 
terest in the medieval that marked the early romantic movement, and 
obtained accurate and extended knowledge of both the old French and 
German literature. 
German may be said to have been the language of his pen rather 
than that of his tongue ; he never became able to speak it fluently, or 
without a peculiar accent. Chamisso’s knowledge of German, though 
not above criticism for colloquial purposes, was sufficient to make him 
an ornament to German literature in both prose and verse, as we have 
