We now took leave of the doctor; my friend, the German physician, who was specially interested in the effect produced on the sight by the disease, appointed the next day for a microscopic examination of some of the patients’ eyes in early stages of the disorder. It may be as well to state that Professor Danielson has published a work illustrating by plates the progress of the disorder. Inoculation is also about to be tried as a method of cure, it having been used with success in this country in another disease, many symptoms of which, to a non-professional observer at least, are identical in appearance with those above described.
“Farewell!” said the doctor; “I have shown you a sad spectacle. I am sorry I can’t converse with you in your own language. But the next generation will all speak English. It has just been proposed in the Storthing that, in the middle schools, less Latin shall be taught, and English made a necessary branch of education.”
Before leaving Bergen I visited the museum, under the auspices of the very obliging curator, Dr. Korn.
Here is a specimen of a new kind of starfish (Beryx Borealis), discovered by Asbjörnsen. The only habitat yet known of this animal is the Sörfjord. The Glesner Regalicus was also here. It is found in very deep water, and so rarely that, in three hundred years, only two or three specimens had been met with.
Some embryo whales of different degrees of maturity were also preserved in spirits; specimens of these delicate little monsters are not, I believe, to be found in any other museum of Europe. The Strix Funerea, or Hawk Owl, such as I shot in the Malanger, with its beautiful black and white plumage, was also to be seen. Especially beautiful was the Anas Stellaris from beyond the North Cape.
The usual assortment of old Runic calendars and other mementoes of ancient days were not wanting: not to mention one of those enigmatical Jette gryde (fairy pots) with which the vulgar have connected all sorts of stories. It is composed of two parts, a mortar-shaped cavity in stone, and in this a loose, round cannon-ball sort, also of stone. Here were evidently cause and effect. A loose stone happening to be brought by the stream into a depression in the rocky bed of the torrent, by the action of water becomes itself round, after the manner of a marble, and makes its resting-place round too. The countenances of people who live continually together are often observed to become like. In the same way the perforated and rounded stones which are formed by trituration in the channels of the brooks on the Scottish borders are still termed, says Scott, by the vulgar, fairy cups and dishes.
Before leaving Bergen, I must not omit to record an incident which really speaks much for the good-nature of these people.
“Will you tell me, sir,” said I, accosting a jolly, bearded gentleman, in the street, “which is the best bookseller in Bergen?”
“Certainly, sir; come this way, I will show you.”