Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 29.djvu/564

548 was one of the education of the family of a Herr Gutmann, a work apparently of a kind with our English "Sandford and Merton," with which the youth was so charmed that, not doubting its reality, he made earnest efforts to become acquainted with the children, sending letters to his friends in other places in hopes that they might be able to forward them to the proper addresses. Pastor Wyss's "Swiss Family Robinson" fell into his hands and awakened in him an intense interest in natural history. He tried, as nearly as circumstances would allow, to repeat the adventures and exploits of the four sprightly youths of this story. He had no buffaloes, and jackals, and ostriches to subdue and train; but he could catch and tame magpies, and hawks, and marmots, and foxes. His experiments were not always fortunate, but he learned. A letter which he wrote to his cousin is interesting as showing how much he admired his "Robinson," and as marking the progress he was making in the study of the ancient-languages, by the comical mixture of German and Latin words in which it is composed. Four years later, in 1823, he was beginning fractions, had finished the Latin Grammar, and was interlarding his letters with French phrases. A few months later these gave way to attempts at the Greek characters, and he was learning to draw; for on the 1st of December he wrote, "To-day I finished my head." It is remarked of this period by his brother, Pastor Justus Heer, that he who afterward exhibited such great powers of memory learned his classical vocabularies and inflections only with the greatest labor, and, being chided by his father for his dullness, got up at four o'clock in the morning to give himself more time for the drill. He afterward added Hebrew to his linguistic acquirements, and gave himself object-lessons in mathematics by calculating the areas of familiar objects, taking the levels of the new road, and measuring the heights of the neighboring mountains. "Once upon a time" one of the papers containing some of his calculations was carried away by a gust of wind, and was supposed to be lost; but it was returned a few days afterward by a mountaineer, who said, "Here is a letter that came down from the sky, and must belong to the parsonage."

The enthusiasm awakened in him by the example of the Robinson boys was permanent, and was manifested in the interest he took in everything living. He attended to the milking of the goats, took upon himself the care of the bees and their swarms, and had collections of beetles and butterflies as early as 1822 or 1823. He was anxious to identify and classify his specimens, but on this subject his father could give him but little information and no scientific aid. He became acquainted with choir-director J. J. Blumer, of Glarus, who was the owner of a small collection in natural history and a few scientific books, and borrowed from him, October 4, 1823, Wilhelmi's "Description of Insects." The question now was how to make this treasure his own. His father advised him to copy out the most important parts