DEVELOPMENT OF PLANT PHYSIOLOGY 109 



sary for the full fruition of plant physiology, was Franz linger. 

 It was thus that he did his epoch-making work. There came into play, 

 however, a personal factor, also, which leads us to understand his 

 fundamental importance in the development of plant physiology. 

 He was called in 1849 as Ordinary Professor with Endlicher. He 

 made an arrangement with that great systematist to teach anatomy 

 and physiology, and leave taxonomy to his colleague. The compact 

 was never broken. And thus for the first time in history a real pro- 

 fessorship of plant physiology became a fact. A new banner was 

 unfurled in a great university. Thousands of students were intro- 

 duced by Unger to plant physiology. In Vienna, botany, as an object 

 of learning, took on a new character: it was seen that there was 

 something else besides that science of botany which was known to 

 the privileged few, the knowledge of the inner structure and of the 

 life of the plant. What furtherance is experienced by a science, 

 especially in a great university, when a special chair is devoted to 

 it, every subject to which a similar lot has fallen, has, I suppose, 

 undergone. 



Through Unger's work, plant physiology, in the best sense of the 

 word, for the first time became so popular in Austria that the estab- 

 lishment of a special ordinary professorship of this study must have 

 appeared to be justified. After Unger's resignation such was pro- 

 vided, and then followed in its train the Institute for plant physi- 

 ology. When Sachs (1875) urged special chairs and laboratories for 

 plant physiology as an undeniable help to science, 1 they were already 

 in existence in Vienna and Prag, and the Institute for plant physi- 

 ology founded in Vienna after the establishment of the special pro- 

 fessorship of anatomy and physiology of plants was the first work- 

 shop of the kind laid out on a grand scale, which furnished the stimulus 

 for the founding of other institutions of the same kind. To-day there 

 exist in Europe and America well-nigh countless such laboratories, 

 and from their origin dates the great advance of plant physiology in 

 the last thirty years. 



These arrangements have, however, been fruitful for the develop- 

 ment of our science in a way which demands our special attention. 

 Brought into being in great universities, the laboratories for plant 

 physiology were placed in a centre in which they came into intimate 

 touch with other domiciles of research, so that the stimulating influ- 

 ence of the other sciences could hardly have been escaped. Advance- 

 ment under this permanent contact became ever more marked. This 

 process has gone on before every one of us, and all who understand 

 will admit that the present condition of our science could not have 

 been realized, and the hope for the future could not have been so 

 promising, if, earlier, plant physiology had remained dependent on 

 1 Sachs, Geschichte der Botanik, Munchen, 1875, p. 572. 



