Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 27.djvu/279

Rh studied the treasures of the Zoölogical Court-Museum at Vienna, under the guidance of the recently deceased Leopold Joseph Fitzinger, its custodian, he became as it were dead for any other than a scientific world, and only the innate energy of his character enabled him to maintain a fixed purpose in life. For every effort to establish himself was defeated in consequence of his having so long lived a wandering life in Africa—as is generally the case with extensive travelers, he had no taste tor a sedentary career—and it was, therefore, not strange to see him starting off again in 1856. This time the field of his researches was Spain and its bird-life, which a brother of his had already studied to some extent. Then, in order to study an opposite region to this, he went in 1860 to the North and visited Norway and Lapland. The fruit of this journey was "Das Leben der Vögel" ("The Life of Birds"), Glogau, 1861, and a general fame as a traveler and writer. He soon afterward received an invitation from Duke Ernst of Saxe-Coburg Gotha to go with him on a hunting-journey to Bogosland and Abyssinia, which was begun in 1862. At the request of the duke, he worked up the collected impressions and observations of this hasty expedition in 1863 into "Ergebnisse einer Reise nach Habesch" ("Results of a Journey to Habesch"), Hamburg, 1863. The physiognomic and sympathetic tastes characteristic of Brehm are also prominent in this book. He was at about the same time appointed director of the Thiergarten in Hamburg, a position which furnished him an excellent opportunity to add to his store of zoölogical observations. It must have been of much value to him, for he had already conceived the idea of publishing an "Illustrirtes Thierleben" on a grand scale. Nevertheless, he surprised the world four years afterward by voluntarily giving up this position and turning his back on Hamburg.

Brehm was also too busy at that time with his own enterprises to be able to devote his whole powers to responsible positions. His "Thierleben" occupied him closely, and required him to review the whole store of observations which he had collected, especially in his later years. What he himself thought of the subject is shown by the following passage of the prospectus which he wrote for the second edition, in 1876: "The activity of science has also worked fruitfully on the public desire for knowledge. The nearer view that is given to it of animals in Nature (in zoölogical gardens), the word spoken from the professorial chairs of the schools, and its multiplied repetition in writing and picture, have—each supplying its part—contributed to spread, with the knowledge of animals, interest in them and appreciation of them. Thus, man's approach to the forms of creation nearest related to him, his recognition of the existence and life of animals, has taught him that this circle of living beings includes its own life within itself, and simply with the entrance into it has much light been shed over the problem of his own origin, which a rigid dogma had long kept in darkness." In this passage he evidently referred to