Joyous Gard
JOYOUS GARD ARTHUR CHRISTOPHER BENSON LONDON JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET, W. 1913 TO ALL MY FRIENDS KNOWN AND UNKNOWN I DEDICATE THIS BOOK
could fight my way in the world as a naturalist, and that I was
therefore justified in following my strong bent in that direction.
My experience in Munich was very varied. With Dollinger I learned
to value accuracy of observation. As I was living in his house, he
gave me personal instruction in the use of the microscope, and
showed me his own methods of embryological investigation. He had
already been the teacher of Karl Ernst von Baer; and though the
pupil outran the master, and has become the pride of the scientific
world, it is but just to remember that he owed to him his first
initiation into the processes of embryological research. Dollinger
was a careful, minute, persevering observer, as well as a deep
thinker; but he was as indolent with his pen as he was industrious
with his brain. He gave his intellectual capital to his pupils
without stint or reserve, and nothing delighted him more than to
sit down for a quiet talk on scientific matters with a few
students, or to take a ramble with them into the fields outside the
city, and explain to them as he walked the result of any recent
investigation he had made. If he found himself understood by his
listeners he was satisfied, and cared for no farther publication of
his researches. I could enumerate many works of masters in our
science, which had no other foundation at the outset than these
inspiriting conversations. No one has borne warmer testimony to the
influence Dollinger has had in this indirect way on the progress of
our science than the investigator I have already mentioned as his
greatest pupil,--von Baer. In the introduction to his work on
embryology he gratefully acknowledges his debt to his old teacher.
JOYOUS GARD ARTHUR CHRISTOPHER BENSON LONDON JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET, W. 1913 TO ALL MY FRIENDS KNOWN AND UNKNOWN I DEDICATE THIS BOOK