To BOTANICAL GAZETTE [JANUARY 
whether I am more nearly right than others is a matter which 
does not enter into the present discussion.’’ The intended func- 
tion of the Vorlesungen was the clear display of a comprehen- | 
sive picture, confused as little as possible by the universally 
known facts of plant physiology, and ‘without the toilsome 
ballast of apparatus-description, which should be contained in 
any handbook or text-book published for the profession.” Even 
in the preface to the Lectures there is betrayed to the thoughtful 
observer and psychologist that fine artistic gift possessed by one 
who was also the keenest and most analytic of investigators. 
Whoever has had the good fortune to have been intimately 
associated with Sachs must have noticed the artistic side of his 
nature. Asa boy he was thoroughly instructed by his father in 
sketching and in painting. A little later, as the student of the 
younger Purkinje, a highly gifted painter, he became farther 
imbued with artistic ideas, and as a student at Prague we find him 
not only upon the benches of the ‘ Horsile,’’ but even zealously 
engaged in the studio work of the Painters’ School. Whoever 
has seen the large and handsome wall-charts which Sachs 
used in illustration of his lectures, and which he himself pre- 
pared, and has watched the rapid and energetic brush work of a 
hand as fleet as it was sure, must grant that this genial investiga- 
tor had the ability of a great artist, and might have achieved 
fame in the world of art.s 
How very deeply his artistic nature imprinted itself upon his 
investigations, and influenced his presentation, is expressed in 
some words which I have found among his unpublished papers : 
With me it has seemed .of great importance, and, indeed, has always 
been a leading thought running through my scientific work, that I should make 
science as much as possible a work of art, and endeavor in all my publica- 
tions to use artistic standards im the presentation of the truths of nature. 
There have been for me, since I began to think independently, no boundary 
lines between art and nature, and through the course of years I am coming 
more and more to regard this unity the single goal of my thought. For this 
I recall very clearly how once he had painted a green plant entirely red, and 
answered my astonished inquiry with the words: “Do you mean that you are unable 
to detect the red which is in the leaf-green ?” 
