i88 Morphology and Systematic Botany under [Book I. 



way. This man was Matthias Jacob Schleiden, born 

 at Hamburg in 1804, and for many years Professor in Jena. 

 Endowed with somewhat too great love of combat, and 

 armed with a pen regardless of the wounds it inflicted, ready 

 to strike at any moment, and very prone to exaggeration, 

 Schleiden was just the man needed in the state in which 

 botany then was. His first appearance on the scene was greeted 

 with joy by the most eminent among those who afterwards 

 contributed to the real advance of the science, though their 

 paths it is true diverged considerably at a later period, when 

 the time of reconstruction was come. If we were to estimate 

 Schleiden's merit only by the facts which he discovered, we 

 should scarcely place him above the level of ordinarily good 

 botanists ; we should have to reckon up a list of good mono- 

 graphs, numerous refutations of ancient errors and the like ; 

 the most important of the theories which he proposed, and 

 over which vigorous war was waged among botanists during 

 many years, have long since been set aside. His true his- 

 torical importance has been already intimated ; his great merit 

 as a botanist is due not to what he did as an original inves- 

 tigator, but to the impulse he gave to investigation, to the aim 

 and object which he set up for himself and others, and opposed 

 in its greatness to the petty character of the text-books. He 

 smoothed the way for those who could and would do really 

 great service; he created, so to speak, for the first time an 

 audience for scientific botany capable of distinguishing scien- 

 tific work from frivolous dilettanteism. Whoever wished from 

 this time forward to take part in the discussion of botanical 

 subjects must address all his powers to the task, for he would 

 be judged by another standard than had hitherto prevailed. 



Schleiden, who had commenced his botanical labours with 

 some important researches in anatomy and the history of 

 development, the most valuable of which in matter and form 

 was an enquiry into the development of the ovule before 

 fertilisation (1837), composed also a comprehensive text-book 



