1 8 A History of Botany, 1860-1900 



the science by his keen insight, while his attractive style and 

 clear modes of expression made him at once the most able 

 and most popular of teachers. His strong personality 

 attracted to his lecture-room and laboratory a crowd of 

 enthusiastic and able pupils, by whose efforts research was 

 advanced to an extent almost unprecedented. Men of all 

 nationalities flocked to him, and after a longer or shorter 

 period of intimate association with him they carried to 

 their own countries the spirit which animated him, and 

 which they had caught while under his immediate influence. 

 In England especially his works aroused the greatest 

 enthusiasm. Research had been effectively pursued by few 

 since the time of the activity of Knight and of Robert 

 Brown. Indeed, if we exclude these two, Sachs himself 

 showed that England had done little for the advancement 

 of botanical science since the days of Nehemiah Grew and 

 Stephen Hales. This reproach, however, was speedily 

 removed, and the English school of botany, inspired by his 

 spirit transmitted by his pupils, Vines, Scott, Bower, 

 F. Darwin, Marshall Ward, and Gardiner, has been able to 

 hold its own with those of the continental nations. In 

 German}'', naturally, his influence was paramount ; schools 

 sprang up under the leadership of Pfeffer, Goebel, arid 

 others of his distinguished students and colleagues, in 

 which the traditions of Wiirzburg are still potent factors. 

 It was perhaps even more by his writings, especially his 

 great textbooks, giving as they did such an impetus to 

 physiological problems, that his influence has been felt. 



Great, however, as must be the position accorded to 

 Sachs in the history of the science, his work was not so 

 epoch-making as that of Darwin. Taking up investigation 

 and research at the level on which the subject stood in 

 1860, Sachs carried many problems certain stages forward, 

 but he did not reach finality with any of them, and subse- 

 quent observers have found it necessary to modify his 



