OBITUAKY OF DR. FRANZ UNGER. 195 



Jacquin. About this time he became acquainted also with a botanist 

 who afterwards attained a world-wide fame, and ended miserably, Ste- 

 phen Endlicher, then amanuensis at the Imperial Library of Vienna. 



The first literary notice conceruiiig linger is contained in a letter of 

 Trattinick's to the Ratisbon 'Flora' (1825, p. 681), in which it is 

 stated that the cand. med. F. Unger has discovered a new Clypeolaria 

 on Thuja. In 1826, Unger made observations on the zoospores 

 of Ectospei'ma (Vaucheria) clavata, which Nees von Esenbeck, then 

 President of the Imperial L. C. Academy, undertook to publish (1827) 

 in the ' Nova Acta.' These organs had perhaps previously been ob- 

 served, but Algologists doubted the fact, or had almost forgotten it. 

 The impression which they made upon the youthful mind of Unger 

 will be fully understood by those who can call to mind their owu on 

 observing for the first time the singular phenomenon they present. 

 Many of the observations of the paper are still sound, such as the 

 genesis, exodus, movements, and germination of the spores ; but that 

 Unger should have regarded the ^' schwdrmspore " as " sporidia of an 

 Alga converted into an Infusorium," and the germinating spore "as 

 an Infusorium converted into a plant," will be readily understood 

 when it is remembered that the influence of Okenism was then as much 

 felt as Darwinism is at the present day, and exercised a powerful spell 

 upon men of much matiu'er judgment than young Unger. Moreover, 

 these papers, and those published some time afterwards in which he 

 defended the animal nature of sporidia of Algae against the attacks of 

 Agardh, especially after the important discovery made at Graz (1843) 

 of the cilia of the spore, — until then held to be a peculiarity confined 

 to the animal kingdom, — are important, because they directed the 

 attention of botanists to the study of the fructification of Algae, and 

 opened the road to our present knowledge of those singular organs. 



In 1827 Unger passed his examination as Doctor of Medicine, 

 and wrote, as his inaugural thesis, an anatomico-physiological paper 

 on Mollusca, full of Okenian speculations, but already indicating the 

 direction in which his mind was bending. About this time died 

 Unger's father, who previously, by the dishonest repudiation of the 

 public debt of Austria, had lost the greater part of his fortune. Unger 

 was thus forced into the medical career, practising until 1830 at Vienna. 

 But he continued, notwithstanding, his scientific studies, devoting 

 himself to vegetable pathology, especially as connected with the ap- 



