Von Martius on the Life and IVritings 0/ Robert Brown. 325 



The morphology, development, geography, statistics, and the 

 history both of living and extinct plants, were enriched by 

 numberless facts and by conclusions of canonic authority. The 

 surest proof of the truth of these is found in the fact that the 

 minds of botanists have become so imbued with them, that, in 

 continuing such researches, we do not recur in detail to them 

 and their derivation, but use them like self-evident projm- 

 sitions. 



Not one of those essential parts of the plant, on whose mani- 

 fold forms and combinations depends the glorious wealth of the 

 vegetable kingdom, was passed over by the searching eye of 

 Robert Brown. From the microscopic germ of the Moss and the 

 vegetable ovule, to the flower — from the stamen and its pollen 

 to the carpel and the fruit, he examined and compared all the 

 organs, in plants of the most diverse orders and in all stages 

 of development. Governed by the deepest sense of natural 

 truth and natural relations, he established the soundest views 

 upon the nature and developmental history of these organs. 

 Thus he vastly contributed to the consolidation of that theory 

 (morphology) which gives to systematic botany its true claim 

 to rank among the sciences. 



In these morphological researches of Robert Brown, there 

 was a peculiar affinity to the spirit of the Germans. This is 

 a deep-rooted cause of the powerful influence which he has 

 exerted upon botany in our country. "While — nay, before the 

 morphological ideas called into life by Goethe^s ' Metamorphosis 

 of Plants' had spread among us, and, developed by such men as 

 Nees V. Esenbeck, Roper, Ernst Meyer, Link, Alex. Braun, and 

 many others, had passed into the schools, — Robert Brown, 

 in far New Holland, carried forward by countless observations, 

 had already arrived, as it were unconsciously, at similar views, 

 which may be traced like a red thread running through all his 

 determinations. 



A more superficial reason why R. Brown's doctrines fell upon 

 grateful soil in Germany, lay in the diffusion of his writings in 

 a German translation (1825-1834), by which Nees von Esenbeck 

 earned great credit. [A few later treatises, not included in this 

 collection, have been introduced into German literature, princi- 

 pally by Schnizlein, in the ' Flora.'] 



In his earliest writings, Robert Brown had drawn attention to 

 the importance of the early conditions and the development, in 

 reference to the characterization of the Orders of Plants and the 

 elaboration of the Natural System. In following out this path, 

 and particularly in making a penetrating inquiry into the phee- 

 noraena in the vegetable ovule and in the pollen, he contributed 

 in an important degree to clear up the previously obscure theory 



