326 ALEXANDER BRAUN. 



Braiin's predilection for botany must have developed early ; for the 

 long series of his communications to the scientific journals began in 

 1822, when he was only seventeen years old. Upon the completion of 

 his university studies, he became Professor of Botany and Zoology in 

 the Polytechnic School at Carlsruhe. He was transferred to the 

 botanical chair at the University of Freiburg in the Breisgau in 1846, 

 accepted a call to that of Giessen in 1850 ; but in 1851, upon the death 

 of Link and Kunth, he was appointe<l Professor of Botany and Di- 

 rector of the Botanic Garden at Berlin, where his useful life has just 

 closed. Although the name of Braun is not connected with any dis- 

 covery of the first order, yet he early took and has well maintained a 

 leading position in the science. He was a botanist of wider culture 

 and acquirement than is now common ; but his strength was given to 

 morphology and to the systematic botany of the higher and some of 

 the lower Cryptogamia. His earliest contribution of considerable 

 extent and permanent importance is his memoir upon the arrangement 

 of the scales of pine-cones, published in 1830, which opened the pro- 

 lific and interesting subject of phyllotaxy. It is understood that the 

 first steps in this direction were taken by Braun's fellow-student, Carl 

 Schimper, who, however, published nothing upon the subject, either 

 then or since : so that, practically, the development of the doctrine was 

 left to Braun, whose memoir is classical. Next to this paper in im- 

 portance and extent is his memoir on Rejuvenescence in Nature, 

 especially as exemplified in the Life and Development of Plants, which 

 first appeared at Freiburg, in 1859, and then at Leipzig in 1851 ; and 

 which was reproduced in 1853, in an Englisli translation, by the Ray 

 Society. This, and his paper on the Individual in Plants, which ap- 

 peared at Berlin in 1852, are writings in which his powers of philo- 

 sophical generalization as well as of acute observation are strikingly 

 manifested. His systematic work, ranging over a variety of topics, 

 is equally marked by acute insight, close observation, and scrupulous 

 exactness. His investigations of 3Iarsilia, Isoetes, and their allies, 

 are most complete. Upon the Gharacece his first essay bears the date 

 of 1834, and various papers have followed from time to time; but, 

 overtasked by official duties during all his later years, his general 

 work upon the subject has not appeared; yet we may hope that it is 

 left in a condition for posthumous publication. Systematic botanists 

 of ability and experience nowhere abound. In the early part of 

 Braun's career, Germany had its full proportion ; but owing to the 

 almost exclusive preference for histology of late years, there are now 

 extremely few, and the loss of a veteran like Alexander Braun will 

 be sadly felt. 



