156 SCIENCE PROGRESS. 



sought to work out his own ideas, to attain his own aims. 

 He became acquainted with several of the chief exponents 

 of botany of the day, such as Unger, Nageli, and Alexander 

 Braun, all of whom he met at the Natural Science Congress 

 in 1856 at Vienna; and also about 1857 with Hofmeister 

 who, in the intercourse that lasted between them for many 

 years, influenced Sachs strongly, though, as the latter con- 

 sidered, at times in such a way as to perplex him. 



In the meanwhile he was finding his life in Prague 

 almost unbearable. The patriotic Czechs of the National 

 party opposed him as a German, and openly told him that 

 they wanted to drive him away. Whilst this was going 

 on, the attention of Prof. Stein, the well-known zoologist, 

 had been directed to Sachs. Stein had formerly de- 

 voted some of his time and energy to the Academy of 

 Forestry at Tharandt and introduced Sachs to the chemist 

 Stockhardt, the director of this institution. Sachs was 

 invited to draw up a statement as to the relation of plant- 

 physiology to agriculture, with the result that he was called 

 to Tharandt as physiological assistant in 1859. He went 

 there in the March of that year. His chief work here was 

 to show that land plants could be raised in aqueous solu- 

 tions of nutrient salts, but he was busy at the same time 

 with other physiological experiments. " Die entdeckungen 

 lagen damals am Wege " was his opinion, " die Botaniker 

 trieben audere Dinge ". Even then Nageli, for instance, 

 described Sachs' researches as belonging to the chemistry 

 of agriculture, there was as yet no talk in Germany of the 

 chemistry of plant-physiology. 



In summer he started work at four o'clock in the 

 morning, and by so doing found time during the years 

 1859 and i860 to study the earlier plant physiologists 

 besides doing his own work. These literary studies caused 

 him in i860 to suggest to Hofmeister that they should 

 edit a large hand-book of botany, in which the collected 

 results of what we now call "general" botany should be 

 critically set forth. The Handbuch der Physiologischen 

 Botanik remains, as is well known, a fragment : various 

 collaborators who had undertaken certain parts drew back, 



