necessary to say anything of the appreciation in which it was held by German-speaking people. A popular edition in three volumes was published 1888 to 1872.
During the publication of this great work, Brehm resided in Berlin, where, as in Hamburg, he occupied himself with introducing the public to the forms of life which were described in so masterly a manner in the "Thierleben." A joint-stock company was formed, with a capital of nine hundred thousand marks, for the establishment of a great aquarium, of which Brehm was given the direction. The position, however, did not suit him, for he found himself too closely hedged up for his comfort. The establishment he founded still remains one of the famous sights of the city, but he withdrew from it, to devote himself again to his literary labors, which he varied with lectures in different cities. Among his literary enterprises is a book in two volumes on "Captive Birds," which was published at Leipsic and Heidelberg in 1872.
Brehm again left his country, to pursue zoölogical researches, in 1876, when at the suggestion of Dr. M. Lindermann an expedition to West Siberia was organized in the Bremen Union for Arctic Exploration, the cost of which was defrayed partly by the Union and partly by private contributions and the Russian merchant Michaelovich Sibiriakoff. The expedition consisted of Dr. O. Finsch, Dr. A. Brehm, and Count Waldburg-Zeil-Trauchburg, who joined it as a volunteer. Its route extended over the Ural across the Ischim Steppe, and along the Irtish to Semipalatinsk, to the Arrat Mountains, through the land of the Kirghiz to the Dzungarian Ala-Tau, thence to Nor-Saissan, then over the Chinese Hoch-Altai and through the Altai crownland to the Obi, and lastly across the Tundra to the country of the Ostiaks and Samoyeds, whence Brehm returned home by way of St. Petersburg, where he stayed a short time to deliver lectures. Reaching home safely, he also delivered lectures there, upon the journey he had just performed. In the same year, 1877, he accepted an invitation from the Crown-Prince Rudolph of Austria, to whom he had dedicated the second edition of his "Thierleben," to go with him on an excursion to the forests of the middle Danube, of which the crown prince afterward published a sketch. Two years later, in 1879, he accompanied the crown prince to Spain. In 1880 he, on his own account, visited North America to deliver lectures. This visit had an unfortunate ending; he was attacked by a violent fever; and after he returned home, having gone to Renthendorf, he was prostrated with a disease of the kidneys which soon proved fatal. This premature ending of his life was the more deplorable, because the restless naturalist was engaged on a new natural history of animals, which was to have a very wide scope. In him passed away one of the noblest of Germans, a man to whom the animal world was a world full of spirit and inspiration.
