Account of the late Professor VahL 147 



TORY. Perhaps, indeed, no other man was so com- 

 pletely a master of the principles of the Swedish na- 

 turalist as his pupil Vahl. Like Linnaeus, he seems 

 to have possessed that rapid perception, which catches, 

 at a glance, the most discriminative characters of na- 

 tural objects ; that critical attention to the forms and 

 structure of the parts of plants ; that severe patience 

 in research, without which no one is capable of be- 

 coming a botanist or naturalist of the first order : 



" \'elut inter ignes Luna minores." 



The labours of Vahl were great, though his publish- 

 ed works are not numerous. Upon the death of Ot- 

 to F. MuUer, he was entrusted with the continuation 

 of the Flora Danica. The ability which he mani- 

 fested in the conduct of this great national work is 

 acknowledged by every botanist, and it will, perhaps, 

 be difficult to find a successor equally qualified for the 

 important task of continuing or finishing the work*. 



Vahl's Symbolae Botanicae, the first part of which 

 appeared at Copenhagen in 1790, is a work of classical 



* Speaking of this work, and of Regenfuss's History of Shells, 

 both of them superb works, and both sujjported by royal muni- 

 ficence, Dr. I. E. Smith says, " The Flora Danica, while un- 

 der the direction of Oeder, was equally well executed ; but Pro- 

 fessor Muller, more of a zoologist than a botanist, continued it with 

 less care and perfection. Its reputation will, I doubt not, soon be 

 abundantly restored by the abilities of Professor V^ahl, to whose 

 cure it is now entrusted. Discourse oji the Rhe and Proifress of 

 Xtitural Historij, read at the opening of the Linnxan Society, 

 April 8, iras. 



