16 



RiNCK. Professor Suringar, however, put fresh courage into him, and 

 allowed him to take his Doctor's degree on the work in the paper. 



On Thursday June 14th, 1877 the promotion ceremony took place. 

 Beijerinck would have preferred to do it privately but, as his name 

 had not been on the books of Leiden University for the last two years, 

 it had to be done in public. His dissertation was entitled : "Bijdrage tot 

 de Morphologie der Plantegallen", and was dedicated to his fa- 

 ther (Cf. Plate IV). It was accompanied by 20 "stellingen" which 

 have been reproduced in Appendix A, since they are representative of 

 the scientific outlook of Beijerinck in the first stage of his develop- 

 ment. On reading these "stellingen" one is struck by the brief ness of 

 many of them (Cf. I, III, V, VII, VIII, XI, XV, XVI, XVII, XIX and 

 XX), and also by the resoluteness in which they were drawn up. To say 

 things briefly and concisely was a quality which marked Beijerinck 

 throughout his career. " A disco very is great when one can communicate 

 it in passing" was one of his favourite sayings. It was not his way 

 to take an intermediate standpoint in scientific matters; Beijerinck 

 liked pithy statements, and nevertheless he was not seldom right ! 



A second point which draws the attention in these "stellingen" is 

 Beijerinck's versatility. Besides subjects from the most divergent 

 domains of biology, physical and chemical items apparently attracted 

 Beijerinck's interest. (Cf. I, II, III, IV and XX). One of the "stellin- 

 gen" (IV) testifies to his close relation to van 't Hoef. Some of them 

 refer to the cosmos (I, XX). This many-sidedness has characterized 

 Beijerinck till the moment of his death. "Stelling" X is devoted to 

 Darwin about whom Beijerinck always spoke with the greatest 

 admiration. 



Although Beijerinck was very worried about the promotion 

 ceremony, all went off quite well. As was usual at the time, the pro- 

 movendus in black with white gloves drove in a carriage and pair to the 

 great hall of the University, and there joined the procession of beadle, 

 professors, and opponents. The latter were van 't Hoef and van Re- 

 nesse. At 5 o'clock the Latin speech of Professor Suringar was 

 finished, and Beijerinck obtained the first degree. Since he had 

 never learnt Latin, he did not understand a word of the speech, and 

 he bowéd before the end. The customary graduation dinner was not 

 given, for Beijerinck could not afford it. 



As a teacher at the Agricultural High School Beijerinck was in 

 his element. This period, or at least the beginning of it, was in many 

 respects the happiest of Beijerinck's life. That he could entirely 

 devote himself to botany is proved by the great number of articles, 

 often of considerable length, which he wrote at that time. All articles 

 of the first volume and the first four of the second volume of the Col- 

 lected Papers were written there. The article "Onderzoekingen over de 

 besmettelijkheid der gomziekte bij planten" i) was communicated to 



i) "Researches on the contagiousness of the gum disease in plants". 



