In 1821 he broached in the _Isis_ the idea
of an annual gathering of German _savants_, and it was carried out
successfully at Leipzig in the following year. To Oken, therefore, may
be indirectly ascribed the genesis of the annual scientific gatherings
common on the Continent, as well as of the British Association for the
Advancement of Science, which at the outset was avowedly organised after
his model. He died in 1851.
[87] Those acquainted with the classical mythology will forgive us for
noting that Charybdis was, and is, a whirlpool on the Sicilian shore of
the Straits of Messina, face to face with some caverns under the rock of
Scylla, on the Italian shore, into which the waves rush at high tide
with a roar not unlike a dog's bark.
[88] The peculiar dreamy boy, who by his nature was set against much of
his work, and therefore seemed but an idle fellow to his schoolmaster,
was thought to be less gifted than his brothers, and on that account
fitted not so much for study as for simple practical life. In
Oberweissbach he was set down as "moonstruck." All this is more fully
set forth in the Meiningen letter, and the footnotes to it.
[89] This was the time when he was apprenticed to the forester in
Neuhaus, in the Thueringer Wald, and necessarily studied mathematics,
nature, and the culture of forest trees.
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