28 A History of Botany, 1 860- 1 goo 



The literature of the period embraces many important 

 works, the most prominent of which had their origin in 

 Germany. The first and, in many respects, the most 

 ambitious of these was the series of volumes projected by 

 Hofmeister, which was to appear under the title of the 

 Handbuch der physiologischen Botanik. The proposals were 

 initiated in 1861, but various circumstances prevented the 

 appearance of any part of it for four years. Difficulties and 

 disappointments attended it throughout ; some of the 

 contributors retired from active co-operation almost at the 

 commencement, and many causes of delay appeared as 

 time went on, so that it never reached publication in the 

 form originally projected. Hofmeister 's own contribution 

 to it was to be the first volume, of which the first part, Die 

 Lehre von der Pflanzenzelle, appeared in 1867. The well- 

 known volume of Sachs' Experimentalphysiologie derPflanzen 

 was issued in 1866, and was followed in the same year by 

 De Bary's Morphologie und Physiologic der Pilze, Flechten, 

 itnd Myxomyceten, so long the standard textbook on the 

 subject. Many years elapsed before another volume was 

 published, and the great development of certain sections of 

 botany compelled a complete revision of the scheme. Not 

 long afterwards Hofmeister died, early in 1877, and it was 

 decided to wind up the enterprise with the publication of 

 De Bary's Vergleichende Anaiomie dev Vegetationsorgane 

 der Gefdsspflanzen, which was then nearly ready for press. 

 This final volume accordingly appeared in 1877. 



A work which exercised a wider influence than the 

 Handbuch was the Lehrbuch of Sachs. Originally pub- 

 lished in 1868, it passed rapidly through four editions, 

 of which the second and the fourth made their appearance 

 in an English translation, to the great benefit of botanical 

 science in Great Britain. As the subject developed and 

 the mass of detail multiplied, Sachs divided the work into 

 two sections, the first of which, on Morphology and Anatomy, 



