281 



PROFESSOR GUISEPPE DE NOTARIS. 



Guiseppe De Notaris was born on the 5th of April, 1805, at Milan, of a 

 noble but impoverished Italian family. He became a student of medicine 

 in the University of Padua, where he obtained his degree in 1830, and 

 practised for a short time in the hospitals at Milan. But his bent towards 

 botanical studies had displayed itself even when a student, and in 1 832 he 

 received his first appointment as Assistant-Professor of Natural History to 

 the Lyceum of St. Alexander in that city. After receiving several minor 

 appointments, he was, in 1839, located at Genoa as Professor of Botany to 

 the University ; and in that town he resided for thirty-four years. During 

 the whole of this time, while receiving honourable distinctions from almost 

 every scientific society in Europe (culminating in the foreign membership 

 of the Linnean Society of London in 1872), he obtained but little recogni- 

 tion from his own Government, and was in constant pecuniary straits which 

 were perpetually interfering with the publication of his valuable botanical 

 works. Indeed, at one time, but for the encoui-agement and assistance of a 

 private friend, he would have abandoned a scientific career in despair. In 

 1867 he was offered, but declined, the chair of botany in the University of 

 Turin; but in 1872 accepted the same post in the University of Rome. 

 There he died on the 22nd of January, of the present year, at the age 

 of 72. 



De Notaris's publications extend over almost every department of 

 Botany ; and it is only possible to refer to the most important, all of 

 which belong to Cryptogamy. In Bryology, his first work (and the earliest 

 of all his publications) was his " Synopsis Muscorum Mediolauensium," 

 published in 1834. This was followed the next year by his " Pugillus 

 Muscorum Italiee novorum vel minus cogintorum," and, in 1837, by his 

 " Specimen de Tortulis Italicis,'' a most important work in establishing the 

 principles of bryological laxonomy. In 1838 he published his " Sylloge 

 Muscorum Italiae ;'' and in 1859 his great work " Musci Italici," which 

 would long before have seen the light but for his want of means. His 

 " Epilogo della Briologia Italiana," published, to its immortal honour, at the 

 expense of the University of Genoa, received from the Academy of 

 Sciences at Paris the great distinction of the Desmazieres prize. His 

 work may be said to have introduced a radical reform into the study of 

 cryptogamy, as may be seen by comparing the first and second editions of 

 Schimper's great work, " Briologia Europaea." De Notaris's bryological 

 labours closed with his " Musci Napoani." 



In Hepaticology we find his earliest work, "Primitise Hepaticologicae 

 Italianse," containing descriptions of ninety -two species. In 1853 he pub- 

 lished "Appunti per un nuovo Censimento delle Epatiche Italiane;" and 



