I corrected a
number myself. . .From Stuttgart we went to Esslingen, where we
were to visit two famous botanists. One was Herr Steudel; a sombre
face, with long overhanging black hair, almost hiding the eyes,--a
very Jewish face. He knows every book on botany that appears, has
read them all, but cares little to see the plants themselves; in
short, he is a true closet student. He has a large herbarium,
composed in great part of plants purchased or received as gifts.
The other, Professor Hochstetter, is an odd little man, stepping
briskly about in his high boots, and having always a half
suppressed smile on his hips whenever he takes the pipe from
between his teeth. A very good man, however, and extremely
obliging; he offered us every civility. As we desired not only to
make their acquaintance, but to win from these botanists at least a
few grasses, we presented ourselves like true commis voyageurs,
with dried herbs to sell, each of us having a package of plants
under his arm,--mine being Swiss, gathered last summer, Braun's
from the Palatinate. We gave specimens to each, and received in
exchange from Steudel some American plants; from Hochstetter some
from Bohemia, and others from Moravia, his native country. From
Esslingen we were driven to Goeppingen, in the most frightful
weather possible; it rained, snowed, froze, blew, all at once. It
was a pity, since our road lay through one of the prettiest valleys
I have ever seen, watered by the Neckar, and bordered on both sides
by mountains of singular form and of considerable height. They are
what the Wurtembergers call the Suabian Alps, but I think that
Chaumont is higher than the loftiest peak of their Alps. Here we
found an old Heidelberg acquaintance, whose father owns a superb
collection of fossils, especially of shells and zoophytes. He has
also quite a large collection of shells from the Adriatic Sea, but
among these last not one was named. As we knew them, we made it our
duty to arrange them, and in three hours his whole collection was
labeled. Since he has duplicates of almost everything, he promised,
as soon as he should have time, to make a selection from these and
send them to us. Could we have stayed longer we might have picked
out what we pleased, for he placed his collection at our disposal.
But we were in haste to arrive here, so we begged him to send us,
at his leisure, whatever he could give us.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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