70 BOTANICAL GAZETTE [july 



tion of my scientific efforts by my American colleagues. It is a great 

 pleasure to note the tremendous advances of our science in the United 



in 



responsible for it." 



Of the greatest interest is a letter of October 2, 1908, written in 

 response to a request for some data to be used in an historical seminar at 

 the University of Chicago. 



* 



Lieber Herr Kollege: 



You overestimate my contributions! I myself am inclined to believe that 

 I have often failed and only in part attained the scientific ideal which hovered 



before me. 



flux 



solution of the problems lies in the distant future, and the best that can be said 



- 



of any one of us is that he was a necessary stage along the way to knowledge. 

 What gratifies me particularly is that in my lecture-room and laboratory I 

 have inspired competent, gifted men of high ideals to strive for the same goal 

 which hovers before me, and that my work shall continue to live in theirs. 



Since you wish to know it, I was born on February 1, 1844. I studied 



Hermann Schacht 



Julius 



time 



The sudden 



Schacht made me decide to go to Jena to Pringsheim 

 \ visits to Schacht, and who invited me to become his a 

 \ind of Pringsheim reacted beneficially upon me, while i 

 *st Haeckel soon made me enthusiastic over the greal 



The 



sented by Charles Darwin. 



My acquaintance with my ten years older teacher soon became friendship, 

 and I have to thank Ernst Haeckel that two years after my promotion in 

 Jena, when Pringsheim retired, I was called to his place'. I was then 25 years 

 old. I was never closely associated with Hofmeister. Unfortunately, during 

 the latter part of his life, Hofmeister became very sensitive and was angry 

 with me because in 1869 in my work on Befruchtung bei den Conifer en I sought 

 to prove that the "corpuscula" do not correspond to the embryo sacs of angio- 

 sperms, but are archegonia. Hanstein came to Bonn as professor after I had 

 already settled in Jena. In 1887 I came to Bonn as Hanstein's successor. I 



J 



very 



E. Strasburger 



In his correspondence with his colleagues, Strasburger never used 

 a typewriter, feeling that a typewritten letter indicated haste and lack 

 of respect. The following is a reproduction, slightly reduced, of a noble 

 paragraph from the above letter. 



