a ee 
1898 ] JULIUS VON SACHS If 
reason every kind of controversy has become distasteful to me, for it gains 
nothing for progress. 
With the idea that it should not be a continuation of the 
Lehrbuch, which had already served but to give a practical insight 
into the subjects discussed, work on the Vorlesungen went on until 
it had attained a bulk almost too great. Sachs’ practical appre- 
ciation of the difficulties of his students, and his thoughtfulness 
for them impelled him to publish with Prantl an abridged edi- 
tion of the Lehkréuch, but later Goebel published the systematic 
part of the earlier Lehrbuch as supplementary to the Vorlesungen. 
As the result of historical investigation, a critical work far 
different from that which occupied his chief attention, appeared 
in 1875, the Avistory of Botany from the sixteenth century up to 
1860. This work formed the fifteenth volume of an histori- 
cal series published by the Royal Academy of Sciences of 
Munich, under the patronage of Maximilian II. Sachs’ con- 
tribution was a departure from any method which had _hereto- 
fore been employed in the presentation of the history of of botany. 
His material was not arranged according to authors, no nor was it 
presented chronologically. In this history there again appears 
evidence of that spirit which never let him feel satisfied until he 
had made out the entire significance of his facts, their mutual 
interdependence, and the influences which ‘acted upon the 
development of botanical study. With his clear lear_presentation 
_ of confusing facts, he a also furnishes to the reader his own well- 
founded judgment upon the relative value of different periods. 
In the preface he wrote: 
I have conceived as my chief task to’discover the first awakening of scien- 
tific thought, and to follow its later development through comprehensive 
theories ; this is my estimate of the true history of a science. ... . I have 
placed here 3 in the foreground as the real makers of our history those men 
who not only established new facts, but contributed fruitful thoughts as well. 
In our judgment, the work of Sachs has been powerful in the 
construction of what we-have called ‘“ building material,’ and he 
is in the first rank of “ geistige” creators. We see him in the 
last years of his life keen as ever in his scientific contributions, 
