202 



NA rURE 



[July i. 1897 



banished, it is so much in the background as to be 

 forgotten. It was extraordinarily invigorating to fall 

 into the midst of a group of young men each engaged 

 in his problem, and ruled over by a kindly despot full of 

 resource and enthusiasm, and both willing and able to 

 give us questions to solve. His tendency was to do 

 things in a broad, handsome manner. He liked to have 

 a flush of material, and he sacrificed it royally ; for 

 instance, in his work on roots he used 3000 beans. He 

 insisted on things being done in a sound, cleanly manner, 

 <lnd especially inculcated the proper cultivation of experi- 

 mental material, often reproving his pupils if they did not 

 give light enough to their plants. He liked the practical 

 details of cultivation, and would take pleasure, for in- 

 stance, in showing his pupils the proper way of moistening 

 ■earth for germinating beans ; with the remark that this 

 ought not to be done by a gardener, and adding " Das 

 niacht mir Spass " as a further reason for doing it himself. 

 He preferred simple methods and broad results, and was 

 essentially a man of round numbers. He did not deal 

 in elaborate apparatus, and had indeed a somewhat 

 unreasonable dislike for "Sogenannte Genauigkeit." 

 But this was rather the dislike of unnecessary exactness, 

 or of exactness misplaced — a valuable point of view in an 

 experimentalist. He had, however, a liking for mechanism, 

 as his invention of the recording auxanometer and of the 

 klinostat shows. 



As a lecturer he \yas admirable, and illustrated his 

 words on the blackboard with evident pleasure and in 

 the most life-like of sketches. 



His papers have been collected in two volumes, pub- 

 lished in 1892-3, many of the researches having appeared 

 in his celebrated " Arbeiten," three well-known volumes, 

 in which it was the highest ambition of his pupils to 

 obtain a place. 



The main point that strikes one about his work is 

 that his was pure rather than applied physiology ; he 

 cared for the behaviour of a plant as he cared for a 

 machine, not in relation to its environment. He was 

 -essentially not a biologist in the modern sense, though, 

 as a matter of fact, he was an evolutionist. 



His work may be divided, as he has himself classified 

 it, into the physiology of nutrition and that of movement. 

 In both these departments he laboured incessantly, and 

 made numerous important discoveries ; yet, in spite of 

 what he added by his admirable researches, it seems 

 to me that he was even more remarkable for his power 

 of strengthening and marshalling a subject, and of 

 placing it before the world with a vigour and clearness 

 that ensured its acceptance. 



Thus, in regard to nutrition, he established, by the 

 most brilliant of his researches, the connection between 

 carbon-assimilation and the existence of starch in the 

 chloroplasts ; yet his fame seems to me to rest with even 

 greater certainty on the fact that he saw more clearly 

 than any modern botanist the overwhelming importance 

 of a just view of assimilation, and that he had the 

 intellectual force needed to drive it into the minds of a 

 generation of botanists. 



In the same way he marshalled, remodelled and largely 

 added to our knowledge of growth and growth-curv- 

 atures, and set forth his results with a style and force 

 that were irresistible. But the conception of stimulus 

 and reaction, now the central principle of plant — as of 

 animal — physiology, only came to him imperfectly, as it 

 seems to me. His use of the word anisotropic for organs 

 behaving differently in relation to the same cause, 

 implies a certain want of perception of the heart of the 

 matter. The word is not really wanted, since the con- 

 ception of irritability postulates what he called anisotropy. 

 The stimulus is but a sign-post ; the needs of the plant 

 in relation to its environment necessitate that different 

 organs shall be guided by the stimulus in opposite 

 directions. 



NO. 1444, VOL. 56] 



In spite of the strength and clearness of his way of 

 thinkmg, there was in him a vein of something like 

 mysticism, as, for instance, in his conception of a radial 

 organ as corresponding to a dorsiventral organ rolled up 

 like a scroll ; or in his assumption of an invisible dorsi- 

 ventrality in certain plagiotropic organs. 



Again, there is in his views what strikes some of us as 

 almost mediaeval. For instance, his idea of the root- 

 forming and shoot-forming material flowing in opposite 

 directions, and thus accounting for the behaviour of 

 cuttings. The same may be said of his views on 

 etiolation, although in these days of the thyroid treat- 

 ment of myxoedema it is rash to deny the feasibility of 

 any explanation founded on the special nutrient value of 

 definite substances. But it is juster to put aside these 

 considerations, and in a broader spirit to remember only 

 the masterly way in which, in his "Lectures" (1882), he 

 developed the classification of organs into " root " and 

 "shoot" into a system of physiological morphology, i e. 

 into a morphology which goes beyond phylogeny into 

 the region of adaptation. 



I have thought it right to speak plainly about Sachs' 

 work, for I am assured that it contains so much of 

 enduring value that it deserves the truth ; and I willingly 

 allow that in the points in which my estimate of this 

 great man is less favourable than some of my con- 

 temporaries, I may be misled by that blindness of which 

 I have already spoken. 



In his later years his life was overshadowed by broken 

 health, and his nature — sensitive and self-centred— was 

 never compatible with a serene or happy life. Those 

 who came under his influence must be glad to forget the 

 less happy side of the picture, and remember with 

 gratitude how much they owe to Sachs. 



Francis Darwin. 



PROFESSOR R. FRESENIUS. 

 r^ARl. REMIGIUS FRESENIUS, whose death 

 ^ occurred last week, was born at Frankfurt-on- 

 Main on December 28, 1818. After a preliminary 

 traming at a pharmacy in that town, he devoted him- 

 self to the study of natural science, more especially 

 of chemistry and botany. In 1840 he entered the 

 University of Bonn, but a year later went to Giessen, 

 where Liebig chose him as assistant in his labor- 

 atory. He graduated at Giessen in 1843. I" 1845 he 

 was called to the professorship of chemistry, physics, 

 and technology at the Agricultural Institute at Wies- 

 baden, with which he has since been identified. The 

 chemical laboratory at Wiesbaden, founded, owing to 

 his exertions, in 1848 by the Government of the Duchy 

 of Nassau, has since been much enlarged, a school of 

 pharmacy being added in 1862, and a research laboratory 

 for agricultural chemistry in 1868. The direction of the 

 latter was taken over by his son. Dr. Henry Fresenius, 

 in 1 88 1. Fresenius received the title of Geheim Rath 

 of the Duchy of Nassau in 1855. His best-known works 

 are his " Qualitative Analysis " (first published in 1841) 

 and his "Quantitative Analysis" (published in 1846); 

 both have passed through very numerous editions, and 

 have been translated into almost every European lan- 

 guage. His numerous original memoirs (there are 162 

 titles in the Royal Society's Catalogue between the years 

 1842 and 1883) deal almost exclusively with analytical 

 chemistry. One of his earliest papers (1843) deals with 

 the composition of a mineral water from Java, and this 

 was a subject to which he frequently returned. A series 

 of papers on the mineral waters of Nassau (1864-68) are 

 well known. Many of his later papers are published in 

 the Zeitschrift fiir Analytische Chemie, which he 

 founded in 1862, and which he continued to edit 

 until his death. T. E. 



