AUGUST WILHELM EICHLER. 355 



method was the perfection of lucid and systematic demonstration. To 

 Americans he always extended a most cordial welcome, and in the 

 charming hospitality of his home he was ever seconded by his ac- 

 complished wife, familiarly known as Curtia. There are many of 

 our younger scholars whose pleasantest and most stimulating associa- 

 tions with German scholarship are connected with the personality of 

 Georg Curtius. 



AUGUST WILHELM EICHLER. 



August Wilhelm Eichler was born at Neukirchen, in Hesse- 

 Cassel, on the 22d of April, 1839. After a gymnasial course at Hers- 

 feld he entered the University of Marburg, where he devoted himself 

 to the study of mathematics and the natural sciences, the latter under 

 the guidance of Wigand. In 1861 he gained his doctorate, the subject 

 of his thesis as candidate being " The Development of the Leaf, with 

 especial Reference to the Formation of Stipules," which at once revealed 

 his talent and promise. Upon Wigand's recommendation, he was now 

 invited by Martius to Munich to be his assistant in the care of his her- 

 barium, and soon became engaged with him upon his great work, the 

 " Flora Brasiliensis," to which he contributed largely until the death 

 of Martius, in 1869, when he himself assumed the editorship of it. 

 From 1865 till 1871 he also gave private botanical instruction in the 

 University of Marburg, and then accepted the position of Professor of 

 Botany in the Polytechnic Institution at Griitz. In 1873 he was ap- 

 pointed Professor of Botany at Kiel, and five years later succeeded 

 Alexander Braun as Director of the Royal Botanic Garden and Museum 

 at Berlin, which office he held till his death, on the 2d of March, 1887. 



Eichler's contributions to the " Flora Brasiliensis," which included 

 the Gymnosperms, many of the smaller polypetalous orders, and several 

 of the other" dicotyledonous orders, were marked by extreme thorough- 

 ness, and established his reputation as an acute and skilful systematic 

 botanist. These investigations led to the discussion by him of various 

 morphological questions, especially in relation to the structure of the 

 flower in the orders under review, and out of this grew the most impor- 

 tant and prominent of his publications, the " Bliithendiagramme." In 

 this strictly morphological treatise Eichler took up the phaMiogamous 

 orders consecutively, and with much originality and painstaking accu- 

 racy gave in detail the peculiarities of many of the genera under each 

 order in respect to the inflorescence, the parts of the flower, and their 

 arrangemeut, illustrating the whole with numerous diagrams. The 



