A Visit to Ceylon

Abstract

WHEN a man of scientific genius writes a popular book; it will generally be found to be either a great success or a great failure; mediocrity, as a rule, does not attend the work of such a man in either direction. Now Prof. Haeckel is already well known to all the world as one of the few leaders in science whose literary ability is on a level with his more professional attainments, and whose genius is therefore exhibited in exposition as conspicuously as it is in research. Thus it was that when we heard he intended to publish a popular account of his six months' travel in the tropics, we expected a great treat in the way of literary performance. We had, of course, read a good deal about Ceylon before, and thus knew that it was a part of the world which in point alike of natural scenery and natural history was well calculated to arouse the enthusiasm of such an artistic-minded naturalist as Prof. Haeckel; and knowing that his pen can paint almost as vividly as his brush, we were prepared for something of unusual interest in the story of his “Visit to Ceylon.” Perhaps, therefore, it is not possible to say anything in higher praise of his book than that it has even surpassed our anticipations. The man of science has retired, as it were, into the background, and left the way clear for the man of letters, the shrewd observer of men and things, the poetic lover of Nature—the frank, open-hearted, wide-minded German character which finds so admirable an expression in this great German biologist. Whether he is diving down among the coral reefs, forgetting his wounds in the keen joy of exploring the beauty and the wonder of those biological treasure-houses, or whether he is scrambling to the “World's End ” through almost untrodden and untreadable jungles 8000 feet above the sea; whether he is moving in English society and deeming it needlessly formal in the matter of dressing for dinner under a tropical climate, which has turned his carefully-provided swallow-tail coat as white as a sheet with mildew; or whether he is living for six weeks at a time zoologising in a remote native village without ever seeing a white man—wherever he is and whatever he is about, we are alike charmed by the character of the man which unconsciously looks out at us in every page, and throws around him, as it were, a halo of romance. A Visit to Ceylon. By Ernst Haeckel; Translated by Clara Bell. (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, and Co. 1883.)