72 IM!()C':,EUINGS UF TlIK 



nijiy be traccuble to this severe inipo.sition o\' self-eiMticisin and 

 a biiniing desire for exactness and tboiou^lniess. I'our years 

 later he went as Professor extraordinarius to tStrasshnrg, w here 

 De Bary liad been appointed as Professor of J3otany in the new 

 Imperial University. From 1879 to the end of 1887 he tauf^ht 

 botany at (^ottingen, where he succeeded Grisebach. After 

 Kichler's death, he was invited to take the chair of botany in the 

 University of Eei'lin. He accepted, though with great reluctance; 

 ])ut before he entered on his new duties De Bary died, and, asked 

 to take over his professorship, he decided for Strassburg, at which 

 uni\ersity he lectured and worked until increasing infirmity 

 obliged liim to retire in l!)08. He continued, however, to live in 

 the city wliich had become dear to him, and gave whatever time 

 he could save from the struggle with his insidious malady to the 

 pursuit of his studies, his latest printed contribution dating from 

 the year before his death. 



There is no doubt that botany has lost in Solms-Laubach,if not 

 one of its greatest, certainly one of its most original exponents. 

 8o great was his universality and versatility of mind that it might 

 appear difficult to class him among botanists, but Jost is probably 

 right in putting him down in the first place as a systematist. As 

 such, he showed a remarkably wide conception of his working field 

 and method, introducing morphology and anatomy, and i-aising 

 tlicin above the mere formal element by linking them up where- 

 ever possible with biology. His first publication was a note on 

 a parasite, Orobanche Bueklana, Koch, in Verb. Bot. A-^erein. 

 Brandenbrrg (186.3), and the next bis dissertation on Latlira'a, 

 which has already been mentioned, and throughout his life his 

 interest for parasites and saprophytes never left him, as his papers 

 on the E-afflesiacese, Hydnoraceaj, Balanophoracese, Santalacea?, 

 Loranthaceaj, Lennoaceae, Cusciitaceaj, Orobanchacea;,and Ehinan- 

 thaceae prove, and even one of his very last communications, in 

 191-1, dealt with a parasite, the obscure genus Sajma, wliich was 

 recognised by him as a close ally of Eajflesia. Some of the 

 families mentioned were treated by him in monographs, namely, 

 the lialHesiacea?, Hydnoraceae, and Lennoacege, to which may be 

 added, as other specimeiis of monographs by him, his treatises on 

 the Caricacea), Pontederiacese, and Pandanaceae. His other sys- 

 tematic papers of smaller compass are numerous, and concern the 

 most varied groups among the plianerogams as well as the crypto- 

 gams. A perusal of the long list of his publications by Jost in 

 ' Berichte der Deutschen Botanischen Gesellscbaft,' vol. xxxiii. 

 ])p. 109-112, will give the reader an adequate idea of the width 

 of ground which he covered. It may suffice here to emphasize 

 his prominent share in algological work of the first order. 



IS'ext to systematic botany, his working field was in the depart- 

 ment o£ phyto-p!)la?onfology. Here his ' Einleitung in die 

 Pala^ophytologie,' Leipzig, 1887 (translated into English by 

 H. E. F. Garnsey and revised by I. B. Balfour, 1891, published 

 under the title ' Fossil Botany,' 1891), marks a turning-point in 

 ]»liyto-palaontol(>gy. The great success of the Look and the still 



