where he prepared for the university. Among his teachers at the gymnasium were several men who afterward became renowned for their learning and special acquirements, namely, F. A. Schlosser, Grotifend, and Carl Ritter. The boy was faithful in his attendance upon the exercises of the school, and satisfactorily passed all of his examinations, but was not distinguished for much knowledge of the ancient languages; indeed, his passionate love of the chemical and physical sciences and his zeal in collecting minerals absorbed so much of his time and tempted him so frequently to neglect both the classics and mathematics that private tutors were occasionally necessary to coach him over difficult passages or knotty problems. He kept up a system of exchange of minerals with his fellow students, and with dealers, especially with Hermann von Meyer and with Herr Menge, in Hanau, to the latter of whom he carried many a bagful of hyalite collected by himself. An important influence was exerted upon the scientific bent of his mind by Dr. Buch, a very intellectual and learned man, who occupied himself largely with chemical, physical, and mineralogical studies, with whom Wöhler enjoyed for years a most instructive intercourse, and to whom he subsequently expressed his indebtedness for the first serious encouragement to pursue scientific studies. Dr. Buch had improvised a laboratory in his kitchen, where, on certain days, experiments were allowed. Among other things, aided by his young pupil, Dr. Buch analyzed some pyrites from Bohemia, in which he found the recently discovered element selenium, and published the result in Gilbert's “Annalen,” to the great satisfaction of Wöhler, who then, for the first time, saw his name in print. The two also prepared some cadmium, another new metal, from zinc-ore.
Wöhler afterward carried with him on a pedestrian tour to Cassel and Göttingen a specimen of what he had prepared, in order to show it to its discoverer, Professor Stromeyer, and to have him identify it as genuine. It was during this visit that he made the acquaintance of the celebrated Blumenbach, whose text-book of “Natural History” he had zealously studied. Blumenbach received the young student very cordially, and kindly showed him the curiosities of his natural history collection. He could hardly have anticipated that a few years later the young man would become his colleague at the university, as the successor to the lamented Stromeyer.
By slow degrees Wöhler obtained more correct ideas of chemistry, and abandoned the doctrine of phlogiston, in which, without fairly comprehending it, he had at first believed. Dr. Buch's rich library was always open to him, and he was not, as formerly, confined to Hagen's old “Experimental Chemistry,” which had been used as a text-bookby his father. Chemical experiments now became a passion with him, they absorbed his mind by day and night; his room at home was transformed into a laboratory full of glasses, retorts, washing-bottles, and minerals—everything in the greatest confusion. No coal-hod in
