THE GARDEN AND ITS DEVELOPMENT/ 



By Dr. Paul Falkenberg. 



[An address delivered at the Festival of February 28, 1899, by Dr. Paul Falkenberg, present rector of 



the University of Rostock.] 



Most Worthy Assembly: When our university, in pious remem- 

 brance of the birthday of the ever-blessed Archduke Friedrich Franz 

 II, established the 28th of February as an annual festival, the only one 

 upon which the entire school is assembled in this place, it was done 

 from a feeling of heartfelt thankfulness for what our well-beloved 

 prince and chancellor had done for the university of his native State 

 during his long and yet all too brief reign. Doubts as to the vitalitv 

 of the institution, which were freely expressed, he resolutely overcame 

 and took the most active personal interest in its welfare. Thanks are 

 due to our illustrious reorganizer that new life now streams through 

 ever}' part of the corporeal frame of our alma mater, notwithstanding 

 that she has nearly completed half a millenium of activity. Especially 

 is this the case in the departments of medicine and of natural science, 

 though the}' are not among those that can boast of the earliest origin, 

 it being only during the present century that they obtained an inde- 

 pendent footing. In 1810 those departments numbered together but 

 five instructors; to-day they have twent^'-three. Not contented with 

 this, the Archduke Friedrich Franz II also established or considerably 

 enlarged the Institute for Scientific Work for the l)enefit of all those 

 minor branches of natural science that have in the course of develop- 

 ment become independent, as well as for the branches of medicine that 

 are ever tending toward greater specialization. 



The students in the department of botany have not, however, had 

 the advantage of the establishment of a botanical garden, or rather of 

 the restoration of one — for at least twice during the life of our univer- 

 sity the botanical garden has succumbed, a victim to adverse circum- 

 stances — and our school has been the only one which during the entire 

 century up to the year 1885 has been compelled to do Avithout a botan- 

 ical establishment of its own. 



* Translated from Der Garten unci seine Entwicklung. Rostock, 1899. 



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