Biographical Notice of H. G. Florke. 199 



opinions were not in accordance with the dogmas of the positive 

 religion which it was his duty to promulgate. 



One can readily understand, then, that this opposition between 

 his teaching and his religious convictions would render Florke 

 unhappy. Nevertheless he was too true-hearted to retain for 

 any lengthened time a charge the functions of which he was 

 unable worthily to discharge; and therefore he resigned his 

 pastorate, and quitted, at the end of three years, his beautiful 

 cure of Kittendorf, notwithstanding all the prayers and entreaties 

 of his friends. 



After this sacrifice, Florke quitted his native district and went 

 to study medicine at Jena; and he travelled on foot through a great 

 portion of Germany, herborizing everywhere, and already search- 

 ing with a keen predilection for lichens, which subsequently he 

 made the principal study of his life. 



The first herbarium of Florke is at the present day still pre- 

 served at Berlin, and contains the findings of these first pere- 

 grinations. 



In 1799, having terminated his medical studies, he settled at 

 Berlin, where his elder brother was publishing a philosophical 

 and technological Encyclopaedia. The two brothers entered into 

 a sort of partnership ; but after some months of common toil, 

 death removed the elder one, and renewed the troubles of our 

 poor botanist. 



Florke now saw that he could do nothing better than to marry 

 the widow of his brother, and take upon himself the sole editor- 

 ship of the Encyclopaedia. 



The sixteen years which Florke passed at Berlin in the occu- 

 pation of a compiler were the saddest of his life. In consequence 

 of a disadvantageous agreement with his publisher, all the pro- 

 fits accrued to the latter, whilst nothing remained to himself in 

 the partition but an ungrateful toil and a straitness akin to 

 destitution. 



Towards the end of his sojourn in this capital, he was even 

 compelled to sell his herbarium, and to deprive himself of his che- 

 rished plants, which he had collected in his youth in the beautiful 

 mountains of the Tyrol and in the Alps of Salzburg. His her- 

 barium was purchased by a society of naturalists of Berlin, in 

 whose possession it still remains. 



The loss of his herbarium deeply affected Florke, and, as he 

 afterwards told his friends, plunged him into a deep melancholy. 



We can well understand the feelings of a botanist who, at the 

 end of his career, sells his herbarium to a museum or public 

 library, and how, with a kind of paternal solicitude, he seeks out 

 a sure resting-place for the child of his toil; but when he is 

 obliged to deprive himself of his collections in the very middle 



