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SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXVII. No. 942 



mirable summary of what was known of all 

 departments of botany up to that date, 

 well written and excellently illustrated. 

 The fourth edition, which appeared while 

 I was in Strassburg, was still better. On 

 looking at the second edition a number of 

 years later, I noticed what seemed to be 

 a curious omission. No mention whatever 

 was made of bacteria. In the fourth edi- 

 tion they are mentioned under Schizo- 

 mycetes. The absence of reference to bac- 

 teria in the earlier edition, however, was not 

 an omission. There were no bacteria at 

 that date. There were no bacteria until 

 Cohn published his " Untersuchungen iiber 

 Bacterien" in 1872. The fact that forty 

 years ago Sachs had never heard of bac- 

 teria, while to-day life has almost become 

 a burden, one hears so much about them, is 

 a striking instance of the rapidity of devel- 

 opment of a subject having a practical as 

 well as a theoretical value. I know no 

 single book which has had so great an in- 

 fluence in shaping the course of modern 

 botany as Sachs's "Lehrbuch. " It may be 

 that the facts there given were generally 

 known in Germany, but they were not 

 known in other countries. On returning 

 home by way of England in 1874, I showed 

 my copy of Sachs to several English bot- 

 anists and it was evident that it was quite 

 new to them. It was certainly unknown 

 in America. If imitation is the sincerest 

 flattery, the value of Sachs's "Lehrbuch" 

 was quickly recognized, for, using it as a 

 model or basis, there soon appeared a large 

 number of really excellent text-books in 

 various languages in which one recognized 

 Sachs translated, Sachs condensed, Sachs 

 diluted, Sachs trimmed to suit local de- 

 mands. Publishers, were they capable of 

 gratitude, would have erected a monument 

 to Sachs's memory long ago. Draughts- 

 men, on the other hand, had little reason 

 to bless his memory. Even now we can 



hardly open a new text-book without see- 

 ing the inevitable "after Sachs." 



One evening I was present at a dinner 

 given by De Bary. On that gay and fes- 

 tive occasion I heard more gossip about 

 botanists than one hears even at a meeting 

 of the Botanical Society of America. My 

 neighbors kept saying: "der schmutzige 

 Kerl." On asking who the dirty fellow was, 

 they said Naegeli. In my innocence I in- 

 quired what Naegeli they meant. They 

 answered "Der Naegeli." Even starch 

 could not save his repvitation, and they 

 proceeded to tell not one but many tales 

 which I know you are dying to hear but 

 which I am not going to tell you. What I 

 wish to say is this: At the same dinner 

 some one, possibly Kostaflnski, spoke of a 

 certain Strasburger, a botanist. I under- 

 stood him to refer to some botanist living 

 in Strassburg and asked his name. I was 

 told that he was a Pole named Strasburger 

 who lived not in Strassburg but in Jena 

 and had written a work which showed him 

 to be a promising young man. That was 

 the first time that I had heard of Stras- 

 burger, who had not then begun his work 

 in cytology. The promise was fulfilled 

 and the young man of 1873 became one of 

 the bright lights of the botanical world. 

 At the close of his long but too brief 

 career he left a brilliant school in a de- 

 partment of botany which he had created 

 and of which he remained until his death 

 the leading spirit. Fortunately we have 

 with us a younger generation admirably 

 qualified to continue the work which he 

 began. 



For the last twenty years most young 

 American botanists have thought it neces- 

 sary to study in Germany to complete their 

 education, but, when I returned in 1874, 

 I was looked upon very miich as one would 

 be who had returned from a journey in 

 Thibet or Central Africa. Things had 



