Valuable, however, as was Amalie Dietrich's work in the Austrian Alps, it was but a preparation for that which some years later she was to enter upon in far-off Australia. Here she devoted twelve of the best years of her life to the cultivation of botany in the virgin soil of Queensland. Here, too, she surprised everyone by her venturesome spirit no less than by her irrepressible zeal in making collections. Heedless of danger, she plunged quite alone into the wilderness and spent days and weeks at a time with the wild aborigines. But she secured what she went in quest of,--a large and valuable collection of plants, containing many new and interesting species. Besides these, she was able to bring back with her to Europe a large mass of zoological specimens as well as countless domestic utensils and implements of warfare and husbandry employed by the savages among whom she so frequently journeyed and with whose manners and customs she eventually became so familiar. Modest and trustworthy, Frau Dietrich had a host of friends in the scientific world, and the number of plants which bear her name are not only a tribute to her worth, but a striking evidence of the extent of her activity in the pursuit of the science which became the absorbing passion of her life.[172] Of Russian women who have become specially noted for their contributions to natural science, a very prominent place must be assigned to Sophia Pereyaslawzewa. After receiving the doctorate of science in the University of Zurich, she became director of the biological station at Sebastopol, a position she held with great eclat during twelve years. Here she made numerous important researches on manifold forms of marine life and prepared many works for the press in German and French, as well as in her native Russian. Her _Monographie de Turbellaries de la Mer Noire_, a large and beautifully illustrated volume published at Odessa in 1892, placed her at once among biologists of the first rank. Indeed, so meritorious was this production of the talented daughter of Holy Russia that the Congress of Naturalists in 1893 did not hesitate to recognize its exceptional value by conferring on the fair authoress a special prize. This gifted biologist has since rendered distinct service in the cause of science by her explorations of the Gulf of Naples and the coasts of France. Her activity is prodigious, and the long list of books and monographs which she has published on the lower forms of marine life in the Black and Mediterranean seas shows that she has a capacity for work that is truly extraordinary. Here is, probably, the place to make mention of a woman of encyclopaedic mind, Clemence Augustine Royer, who was born in 1830 in Nantes, France. She wrote on such a variety of subjects that it is difficult to classify her. She was in no sense of the word a specialist, and she seems by temperament to have been averse to confining herself to any one branch of knowledge.