JULIUS SACHS. 1 



Si quis tota die currens 

 Pervenit ad vesperam satis est. 



AFTER great suffering Julius Sachs sank peacefully to 

 rest at six o'clock on the morning of 29th May, 1897, 

 at Wiirzburg, the scene for many years of his labours. 

 Wherever scientific botany has a home, and by many 

 outside the narrow circle of specialists, this loss has been 

 regarded as irreparable. By no one has it been felt more 

 keenly than by the writer of these lines, who will always 

 thankfully recall the happiness it has been to him to have 

 been closely connected throughout a long series of years as 

 pupil and friend with him who has passed from our midst. 



When I attempt to briefly sketch the life of the man to 

 whose brilliant intellect botany is so greatly indebted, there 

 rises involuntarily to my mind the saying of Petrarch's that 

 I have quoted above, a saying at once so sad and yet so 

 consoling. 



Yes, his life was a struggle, a ceaseless, single-minded 

 pressing-forward without rest to the goal of knowledge. 

 To him study, research, teaching were not merely the 

 external activities of his calling that might be laid aside 

 for hours, days or even weeks, and then be again resumed. 

 They absorbed his whole being more than was good for his 

 personal welfare. But the evening came after this long day 

 in which he had so faithfully laboured. No one realised 

 this more fully than he himself. A prey to physical suf- 

 fering, his sharpest pang was that he could no longer work 

 for science with his former energy, and if anything made 

 it hard for him to face death, it was the knowledge that he 

 must leave behind as an unfinished sketch much that he 

 wanted to say to the world. 



1 This article, which is somewhat shortened, is a translation by Miss E. 

 D. Shipley of Professor Goebel's article in Flora oder Allgemeine Botanische 

 Zeitu/ig, 1897. 



