326 Von Martius on the Life and Writings of Robert Browiji 



of the reproductive organs of plants. After Amici (1823) had 

 discovered the tubular elongation of the pollen-grain, Robert 

 Brown (1831-1833) raised the physiological import of the pol- 

 len-tube to the rank of a certainty, by demonstrating that it 

 penetrated through the canal of the style into the cavity of the 

 ovaiy, down to the nucleus of the then open ovule. This fact, 

 the high importance of which was acknowledged by the Royal 

 Society of London by the award of the Copley medal, inaugu- 

 rated a new phase in our views of the sexes and sexual functions 

 in plants. It may be called the pole round which turn a series 

 of the most celebrated researches of modern botany. These 

 refined researches, only possible with the assistance of the won- 

 derful improvements of the microscope, have strongly excited the 

 minds of our epoch. It suffices to recall the great number — 

 there are more than thirty — of those who have with more or less 

 profit pursued researches in the same path, to indicate how uni- 

 versally the bearing of this investigation has been recognized. 

 These researches have been extended beyond their original goal 

 — the impregnation of Angiospermous plants — to include the 

 Cryptogamia in their sphere, and have in many points en- 

 larged the field of view in the allied region of the animal king- 

 dom. They already reveal deeply-seated relations of living 

 things in those mysterious grades of creation, which were scarcely 

 dreamt of less than half a century ago. Not without a sense of 

 joy and reverence do we look upon these researches, in which 

 truth and error are interwoven ; but truth, ever victorious at 

 last, and securing to us a higher knowledge, becomes the com- 

 mon property of all. 



Even before these results had been worked out through so 

 many great difficulties, Robert Brown^s advancement of the higher 

 systematic botany had been fully appreciated. This, the organic 

 coordination of the vegetable kingdom, acquired at his hands 

 abundance of new facts and important fundamental principles. 

 Indeed we may say that the ^ Natural System ' first became na- 

 tural by his labours. No other botanist possessed so rich an 

 experience of the most multiform structures of plants, which he 

 could apply under such sound morphological ideas towards the 

 erection of the Natural System. Hence any one comparing the 

 renowned fundamental work of A. L. de Jussieu with recent 

 systematic writings, must be astonished by the numerous and 

 radical alterations and improvements which he everywhere finds 

 stamped with the name of Robert Brown. The comprehensive 

 works of DeCandolle and Meisner also remind us, on nearly every 

 page, of the fertile activity of the great master. In England, 

 the two Hookers, Lindley (whose meritorious labours have in so 

 important a degree cooperated in the diffusion of the natural 



