Physiology of Plants. 75 



great alike as student and teacher, investigator and 

 writer, and he has left an indelible mark on many depart- 

 ments of botany, on vegetable physiology in particular. 



His interest in nature was instinctive, for as a boy 

 he made his herbarium and collection of skulls, and it 

 seems to have developed rather in spite of, than in vir- 

 tue of, his early education. As far as scientific discipline 

 was concerned, he was little influenced by any of his 

 teachers. In face of great difficulties, for he was "a 

 self-made man", he graduated at Prague in 1856. In 

 the following year he established himself as a privat- 

 docent in plant physiology, at a time when, as he has 

 himself said, there was practically no such department 

 of botany, and when it was possible for a critic to re- 

 mark without great exaggeration, "Two lectures are 

 ample for all there is to say upon that subject ". 



After holding various posts, Sachs was called to the 

 chair of botany at Wiirzburg, where he remained for 

 the rest of his life, notwithstanding many tempting 

 offers from elsewhere. In spite of severe ill-health and 

 close devotion to his work as a teacher, he succeeded 

 by his original researches in founding the modern 

 physiology of plants, and wrote four great books. 



If ever a man made for progress by writing text- 

 books, it was Sachs. His Experimental Physiology 

 (1866) is a fundamental classic, which was afterwards 

 Drought up to date by his very different (dictated) 

 Lectures on the Physiology of Plants \ his Text-book of 

 Botany (1868) took the place of Schleiden's Outlines, 

 and "did for botany what Gegenbaur achieved for 

 zoology, in presenting the morphological facts of the 

 vegetable kingdom for the first time as a whole"; his 

 History of Botany, to which we have been greatly 

 indebted in this little book, is perhaps the most charm- 

 ing, and at the same time philosophical, contribution yet 

 made to the historical literature of natural science. 



We cannot within our limits do more than hint at 

 what Vegetable Physiology owes to Sachs. Only the 

 nature of his most important work can be indicated, 

 under four heads. 



(a) Contributions to a knowledge of the everyday 



