Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 29.djvu/850

830 Bohemian Museum, and here Professor Fritsch has collected and arranged in gradation numerous very remarkable fossils. The immense collection of the Silurians, made by Barrande, and given by him to Bohemia, has been left in the apartments in the Chotek Gasse in which the eminent geologist resided. It is hardly possible to conceive of its richness in orthoceratites, cyrtoceratites, and trilobites. I saw an example here of the degree to which the love of paleontology may be developed, for in the more than humble rooms, where the eminent tutor of the Comte de Chambord passed most of his life, there are collections of primary fossils that cost enormous sums. Barrande was parsimonious toward himself, lavish to science. His collections are to be removed to the museum now in building. A young Czech professor, M. Novak, and a German geologist, Herr Waegen, distinguished for his works on the paleontology of India, are continuing Barrande's labors on the silurian formation of Bohemia.

Dresden, whose picture-galleries attract artists from all countries, has also greatly improved its galleries of geology and paleontology. Their director, Herr Geinitz, has arranged the fossils in geological order, so as readily to convey an idea of the history of past ages. The creatures of the Permian epoch are particularly well represented. No person has contributed so much as Professor Geinitz to the knowledge of that epoch, which was formerly believed to represent a moment of a slackening of the vital forces, but has furnished during several years past a multitude of fossil plants and animals.

Berlin has an entirely different character from Vienna. If we were living in pagan times, we might say that in Vienna they would raise statues in honor of Apollo, Minerva, and perhaps Venus, but in Berlin of Mars. Vienna is always panting for pleasures, especially the pleasures of the mind. Berlin, isolated in regions that the moraines of the glacial period left devastated, prefers the hard things of military life. But the government is interested in science as well as in military affairs, for it knows that intelligence makes strength. A large building has recently been erected in the Invaliden Street for the geological collections of which M. Hauchcome has charge, and another for the collections of agricultural arts in which M. Nehring has placed the curious quaternary fauna which he has described as the fauna of the steppes. Between these museums a grand Museum of Natural History is to be built. The university has excellent collections in geology in charge of Professor Beyrieh, and in paleontology under the care of Professor Dames. Among them may be seen the second specimen of the archæopteryx, which cost three thousand dollars. It has the advantage over the specimen in the British Museum of possessing a head, and of showing its fore-limbs, the fingers of which are not united as in existing birds. Professor Dames has recently published an interesting memoir on this curious creature.

I might also speak of Russia, where I saw fine collections of fossils