MODERNBIOLOGY 43 9 



the Chinese language. As a teacher he won the affection of his pupils. In the 

 year of revolution, 1848, he took advantage of his popularity to plead the 

 Government's cause before the rebellious students, but they became em- 

 bittered against him and drove him out of Vienna. This he felt very deeply 

 and he died shortly afterwards, some say by his own hand. His great work 

 on plant classification is his Genera plantarum, which comprises all the then 

 known vegetable genera arranged in a natural system; he has given a brief 

 summary of the subject in his Enchiridion. His service lies not so much in the 

 new ideas that he produced in the sphere of classification as in the particu- 

 larly clear, concise, and complete characterization and demarcation of fami- 

 lies and genera which he created and which made his work the basis for all 

 later plant classification. 



Hedwig on mosses 

 By the side of this generally systematic and morphological research there 

 developed a keen interest in the specialized study of particular botanical 

 subjects, the hitherto neglected lower plants offering, of course, an especially 

 attractive field of study. As a pioneer in this sphere Johann Hedwig (1730- 

 99) is worthy of mention. He was born in Hungary, but he worked mostly in 

 Leipzig, first as a physician and then as professor of botany. He applied him- 

 self to the study of the multiplication of the cryptogams, making careful 

 observations of the propagation and germination of the spores. It was 

 chiefly. the mosses, however, that occupied his attention, and in this field 

 he was a pioneer; he divided the large and unwieldy genera that Linnasus 

 had created into a number of well-characterized genera, which are in part 

 still retained, and he found for them a good basis of classification in the shape 

 and marginal formation of the capsules. Many other naturalists have since 

 followed in his footsteps, so that muscology is now a thoroughly elaborated 

 specialized section of botany. 



The Algas and the Fungi became subjects of special treatment much later 

 than the mosses. Of the pioneers of Algx-research we have already described 

 one of the foremost, Carl Adolf Agardh (Part II, p. u^i). His son, Jacob 

 Georg (1813-1901), followed in his father's footsteps with credit. 



Vries on fungi 

 In the Fungi as a field of research Sweden has also produced one of the most 

 eminent names, that of Elias Fries, who has likewise been one of the most 

 distinguished Swedish botanists since Linnxus. Born in 1794, the son of a 

 priest in the province of Smaland, Fries devoted himself, even as a boy, to 

 the study of botany, and of Fungi in particular; when still a youth he became 

 a lecturer at Lund and in the year 1834 professor at Upsala, where he was 

 active until 1859, when he became professor emeritus; he died there in 1878. 

 When Fries first went to Upsala the University was a centre of romantic 

 reverie and metaphysical speculation; he took up the cudgels with success 



