467 



trious men who raised natural science to the rank it now holds, and in 

 which the names of Jussieu, DeCandolle, Goethe, and Link, not to 

 mention any living ones, stand pre-eminent. 



We have also been requested to prepare an address, and now have 

 the pleasure of submitting the following one to the consideration of our 

 readers. Whoever would wish to sign it, is invited to send his name 

 to our office (9, Devonshire Street, Bishopsgate, London). Previously 

 to the delivery of the document we will cause the names, arranged 

 alphabetically, to be printed in some of the journals of the widest cir- 

 culation, both at home and abroad. 



To M. Nees von Esenbeck, President of the ;L. C. Academy of 



Naturalists. 

 Mr. President, 



The undersigned have learned, with feelings of the deepest 

 regret and sorrow, that you have been suspended in your functions as 

 Professor in the University of Breslau ; that a man whom they have 

 always regarded as one of the most classical, has suddenly been 

 arrested in the pursuit of those investigations which have been pro- 

 ductive of such invaluable results to science. It falls but to the lot 

 of a few to make, at an advanced age, those treasures available which 

 a life of constant application and incessant study have enabled them 

 to accumulate. You, Mr. President, are, by the grace of Providence, 

 still in possession of those faculties which allow you to add to the 

 brilliant achievements and important labours of which your whole 

 career has been an uninterrupted series. How paifrful, then, becomes 

 the reflection, that what God has granted man has cruelly prohibited, 

 and, by depriving you of those means essential to existence, is about 

 to bury for ever your vast amount of knowledge, and consign you, as 

 it were, alive, to a premature grave. Keenly as we feel your misfor- 

 fortune, still more keenly do we feel our inability to alleviate it. Our 

 voice of sympathy is the only consolation we can offer; and we de- 

 clare that, uninfluenced by the slanders with which malignity has 

 overwhelmed you, we still remember your name with gratitude and 

 respect ; and, deaf to the arguments with which envy and hatred have 

 attacked you, we still look upon you as the great philosopher who has 

 raised for himself in the field of science a monument, which neither 

 the violence of parties nor the lapse of time are capable of overturning. 



