IV. Meanwhile Linnæus had brought order, Cuvier had founded his school of anatomists, Haller had re-organized physiology, the microscope had deepened analysis, and zoology came of age as a specialism. Henceforth travellers’ tales were at a discount; even a Humboldt might be contradicted, and platitudinarian narratives of a voyage round the world ceased to find the publisher sympathetic or the public appetized. The naturalist-traveller was now a zoologist, or a botanist, or an ornithologist, or an entomologist; at any rate, a specialist. But it was sometimes found profitable to work in companies, as in the case of the Challenger expedition.
V. Lastly, we find that on the travellers, too, “evolution” cast its spell, and we have Darwin and Wallace as the types of the biological travellers, whose results go directly towards the working out of a cosmology. From Bates and Belt and Brehm there is a long list down to Dr. Hickson, The Naturalist in Celebes, and Mr. Hudson, The Naturalist in La Plata. Not, of course, that most are not specialists, but the particular interest of their work is biological or bionomical.
I have added to this essay a list of some of the most important works of the more recent naturalist-travellers with which I am directly acquainted, being convinced that it is with these that the general, and perhaps also the professional student of natural history should begin, as it is with them that his studies must also end. For, not only do they introduce us, in a manner usually full of interest, to the nature of animal life, but they lead us to face one of the ultimate problems of biology—the evolution of faunas.
II.
Alfred Edmund Brehm (1829-1884) was born at Unter-Renthendorf in Sachsen-Weimar, where his father—an accomplished ornithologist—was pastor. Brought up among birds, learning to watch from his earliest boyhood, accompanying his father in rambles through the Thuringian forest, questioning and being questioned about all the sights and sounds of the woods, listening to the experts who came to see the famous collection in the Pfarr-haus, and to argue over questions of species with the kindly pastor, young Brehm was almost bound to become a naturalist. And while the father stuffed his birds in the evenings the mother read aloud from Goethe and Schiller, and her poetic feeling was echoed in her son. Yet, so crooked are life’s ways, the youth became an architect’s apprentice, and acted as such for four years!
But an opportunity presented itself which called him, doubtless most willing, from the desk and workshop. Baron John Wilhelm von Müller, a keen sportsman and lover of birds, sought an assistant to accompany him on an ornithological expedition to Africa, and with him the youth, not yet out of his teens, set forth in 1847. It was a great opportunity, but the price paid for it was heavy, for Brehm did not see his home again for full five years, and was forced to bear strains, to incur responsibilities, and to suffer privations, which left their mark on him for life. Only those who know the story of his African journeys, and what African travel may be with repeated fevers and inconsiderately crippled resources, can adequately appreciate the restraint which Brehm displays in those popular lectures, here translated, where there is so much of everything but himself.
After he returned, in 1852, rich in spoils and experience, if otherwise poor, he spent several sessions at the universities of Jena and Vienna. Though earnestly busy in equipping himself for further work, he was not too old to enjoy the pleasures of a student life. When he took his doctor’s degree he published an account of his travels (Reiseskizzen aus Nordostafrica. Jena, 1855, 3 vols.).
After a zoological holiday in Spain with his like-minded brother Reinhold—a physician in Madrid—he settled for a time in Leipzig, writing for the famous “Gartenlaube”, co-operating with Rossmässler in bringing out Die Tiere des Waldes, expressing his very self in his Bird-Life (1861), and teaching in the schools. It was during this period that he visited Lapland, of whose bird-bergs the first lecture gives such a vivid description. In 1861 he married Matthilde Reiz, who proved herself the best possible helpmeet.
In 1862, Brehm went as scientific guide on an excursion to Abyssinia undertaken by the Duke of Coburg-Gotha, and subsequently published a characteristic account of his observations Ergebnisse einer Reise nach Habesch: Results of a Journey to Abyssinia (Hamburg, 1863). On his return he began his world-famous Tierleben (Animal Life), which has been a treasure-house to so many naturalists. With the collaboration of Professors Taschenberg and Oscar Schmidt, he completed the first edition of this great work, in six volumes, in 1869.
Meanwhile he had gone to Hamburg as Director of the Zoological Gardens there, but the organizing work seems to have suited him ill, and he soon resigned. With a freer hand, he then undertook the establishment of the famous Berlin Aquarium, in which he partly realized his dream of a microcosmic living museum of nature. But, apart from his actual work, the business-relations were ever irksome, and in 1874 he was forced by ill-health and social friction to abandon his position.