laboratories of a score or two of our
larger colleges. Yet, with Haeckel here, it is unquestionably the finest
laboratory in which to study zoology that exists in the world to-day, or
has existed for the last third of a century.

Haeckel himself is domiciled, when not instructing his classes, in a
comfortable but plain room across the hall--a room whose windows look
out across the valley of the Saale on an exquisite mountain landscape,
with the clear-cut mountain that Schiller's lines made famous at its
focus. As you enter the room a big, robust man steps quickly forward to
grasp your hand. Six feet or more in height, compactly built, without
corpulence; erect, vigorous, even athletic; with florid complexion and
clear, laughing, light-blue eyes that belie the white hair and whitening
beard; the ensemble personifying at once kindliness and virility,
simplicity and depth, above all, frank, fearless honesty, without a
trace of pose or affectation--such is Ernst Haeckel. There is something
about his simple, frank, earnest, sympathetic, yet robust, masculine
personality that reminds one instinctively, as does his facial contour
also, of Walt Whitman.

A glance about the room shows you at once that it is a place for study,
and also that it is the room of the most methodical of students.
There are books and papers everywhere, yet not the slightest trace of
disorder. Clearly every book and every parcel of papers has a place,
and is kept in that place. The owner can at any moment lay his hand upon
anything he desires among all these documents. This habit of orderliness
has had no small share, I take it, in contributing to Professor
Haeckel's success in carrying forward many lines of research at the same
time, and carrying all to successful terminations. Then there goes with
it, as a natural accompaniment, a methodical habit of working,
without which no single man could have put behind him the multifarious
accomplishments that stand to Professor Haeckers credit.

Orderliness is not a more pronounced innate gift with Professor Haeckel
than is the gift of initial energy to undertake and carry on work which
leads to accomplishment--a trait regarding which men, even active men,
so widely differ. But Professor Haeckel holds that whatever his normal
bent in this direction, it was enormously strengthened in boyhood by the
precepts of his mother--from whom, by-the-bye, he chiefly inherits his
talents. "My mother," he says, "would never