48 PROCEEDINGS OF THE 



nhle companion. His loss will be deeply mourned by a wide 

 circle of friends. 



He was elected a Fellow of tbe Linnean Society in March 



1888. 



Ferdikat^d Gustat Julifs Toy Sachs was the third son of 

 Graveur Saclis, and born at Breslau on 2 ad October, 1832. Evren 

 whilst a child he was passionately devoted to the study of plants 

 and their cultivation, in companionship with the two sous of 

 J. E. Purkinje. In 1818 he lost his father by apoplexy, and a few 

 months after, by cholera, he lost his mother. Thus thrown upoa 

 his own resources, young Sachs endeavoui'ed to maintain himself 

 by lithosraphv and painting, but discouraged bj^his poor success, 

 had determined to become a sailor, when he was invited by Pur- 

 kinje to tak^ up his abode in his house at Prague as his assistant. 

 This enabled him to complete his course at the Gymnasium, and 

 in 18')1 he was a student at the University of Prague, where he 

 attended lectures on botany by Kosteletzky and AVillkomm. 

 During his six years' sojourn with Purkinje young Sachs pub- 

 lished nearly a dozen papers in the Bohemian journal ' Ziva ' ; 

 his first German paper came out in 1855 in the ' Botanische 

 Zeitung,' on CoUema, in which he gave a foreshadowing of the 

 now accepted duality of lichen-life. 



In 1856 Sachs received his degree, but his dissertation on 

 Difl^usion is stated not to have been published. In 1859, on the 

 recommendation of Hofmeister, Sachs was called to Tharaud as 

 assistant to Prof. Stockhardt, and there continued his experi- 

 ments on water-cultures which he had started in Prague, and 

 afterwards turned to such striking accoaut. 



Early in 1861 he was made chief of the experiment station at 

 Chemnitz, but before entering upon his duties thei*e, he accepted 

 a post in the agricultural academy at Poppelsdorf. During his 

 stay at this place he married an Austrian lady, whose income 

 supplemented his own slender stipend of 700 Thalers or £105 

 sterling. 



Erum this period must be dated some of his most important 

 work upon what is now termed metabolism, influence of light 

 and temperature on plant-functions, prompting the idea that the 

 true organs of assimilation must be sought for in the chloro- 

 plastids. In 1865 appeared his ' Handbuch der Experimental- 

 Phvsiologie der Pflanzen,' being the fourth volume of ilofmeister's 

 'Handbuch der Physiologischen Bofauik.' 



De Bary left Ereiburg-im-Breisgau for Strassburg in 1867, 

 and Sachs was selected to succeed him ; one year later succeeding 

 Schenk at "Wiirzburg. Here he found himself in congenial 

 environment, his wanderings ceased, and here he remained to the 

 close of his life, altnough he had tempting offers of advancement 

 from Jena, Heidelberg, Vienna, Dorpat, Berlin, Bonn, and 

 Munich. 



It was during the first year of his work at Wiirzburg that 



