JULIUS SACHS. 157 



and Hofmeister fell ill and died in 1877 without being able 

 to complete his share ; but in spite of all mishaps the four 

 volumes that appeared rank among the most valuable pro- 

 ductions of more recent botanical literature. Sachs had 

 to frequently give addresses at agricultural meetings and 

 so gained the useful knowledge that he had a natural gift 

 for public speaking. 



In the winter of 1 860-1 he was invited to become the 

 head of the recently established agricultural department of 

 the polytechnic at Chemnitz. His position there bristled 

 with difficulties, and he welcomed the proposal that he 

 should accept the Chair of Botany and Natural History at 

 Poppelsdorf near Bonn, whither he removed in 1861. 

 Here he married and in time became the father of two 

 daughters and a son. 



As regards science the six years spent at Bonn are 

 imongst his most fruitful. Besides a number of other 

 works it was here that his Experimental Physiology was 

 written and the Text-book begun. His lectures were highly 

 appreciated and at the end of two years he was relieved 

 from lecturing upon mineralogy and zoology ; henceforward 

 he dealt only with physiology during the winter, and in the 

 summer delivered special lectures on agricultural plants. 

 There was but little intercourse between him and the 

 botanist Schacht, who was then at Bonn, but who was 

 already in bad health, and whose temperament was 

 thoroughly uncongenial to his own. With Schacht's suc- 

 cessor, Hanstein, on the contrary, friendly relations en- 

 sued. On New Year's Eve, 1866, he received the news 

 that he had been called to Freiburg im Breisgau as suc- 

 cessor to De Bary : he went there in April, 1867. A small 

 salary and a poor garden formed two undesirable elements 

 in his life at Freiburg, and after three terms he willingly 

 left to go to Wurzburg. There, as we know, he remained, 

 in spite of brilliant offers to move elsewhere. As early as 

 1869 he received a call to Jena, in 1872 to Heidelberg, in 

 1873 to Vienna, in 1877 to Berlin, where later they tried to 

 obtain him for the Agricultural College ; he was also in- 

 vited to Bonn under tempting circumstances. When 



