AUGUST WILHELM VON HOFiMANN. 411 



and he made no distinction between contemporary or well known 

 botanists and the young or obscure. Many of the younger generation 

 of botanists remember his kind words of encouragement and sympathy 

 and are grateful for his criticisms, which were always made in a 

 kindly spirit, without cynicism or ill-nature. His long and active life 

 came gradually to a close, without physical suffering or mental decrepi- 

 tude. It was the privilege of the writer to meet him in his library 

 surrounded by his books only a few months before his death, and, 

 although he had become somewhat deaf, it was hard to believe that 

 he was so far up in the eighties, for he showed the same intelligence 

 and the same interest in what was going on in the botanical world as 

 he had shown twenty years before. 



A list of the botanical writings of Alphonse de Candolle will be 

 found in the Revue Generale de Botanique, Volume V., pages 200-208. 



1893. W. G. Faklow. 



AUGUST WILHELM VON HOFMANN. 



August Wilhelm Hofmann, a Foreign Honorary Member of 

 the Academy, was born in Giessen, April 8, 1818. His child- 

 hood passed quietly in his native place, and in its schools he 

 was fitted for its University, at that time famous for the labora- 

 tory which Liebig had established in the old guard-house, and 

 in which chemistry was first taught by experiment. It is not 

 strange, therefore, that, after paying attention for a short time 

 to other studies, Hofmann was attracted to chemistry and entered 

 the laboratory. Here he soon became one of the most eminent 

 among that company of students, including the picked men from 

 all civilized countries, as his first researches, which related to 

 the identity of aniline obtained from different sources, showed a 

 grasp of the subject, a chemical insight, and a skill in experi- 

 ment remarkable in so young a man. He also had the good 

 fortune in the course of them to discover the chloranilines, the 

 formation of which could not be brought into harmony with 

 the dualistic theory then at the height of its dominion, and this 

 brought his work prominently to the notice of the chemical 

 world. 



In 1840 Liebig took him as his private assistant, when it 

 became his duty to do part of the editorial work on the " Anna- 

 len der Cheuiie und Pharmacie " ; and this early literary train- 

 ing undoubtedly was a principal cause of the ease with which he 



