These are all signs which clearly indicate a radical 

 1 evolution, and they are all the more significant since it 

 is the younger generation, which will soon take the lead, 

 that thinks and speaks in this manner. But it is none the 

 less noteworthy that the younger naturalists are not alone 

 in this movement. Many of the older men of science are 

 swelling the current. We shall recall here only the great- 

 est of those whom we might mention in this connection. 



Julius von Sachs, the most gifted and brilliant botanist 

 of the last century, who unfortunately is no longer among 

 us, was in the sixties an outspoken Darwinian, as is evident 

 especially from his History of Botany and from the first 

 edition of his Handbook of Botany. Soon, however, Sachs 

 began to inchne toward the position assumed by Naegeli; 

 and as early as 1877, Wigand, in the third volume of his 

 great work, expressed the hope that Sachs would withdraw 

 still further from Darwinism. As years went by, Sachs 

 drifted more and more from his earlier position, and Wig- 

 and was of opinion that to himself should be ascribed the 

 credit of bringing about the change. During his last years 

 Sachs had become bitterly opposed to Darwinism, and in 

 his masterly "Physiological Notes" he took a firm stand on 

 the "internal factors of evolution." 



During recent years I had the pleasure of occasional 

 correspondence with Sachs. On the i6th of September, 

 1896, he wrote me: For more than twenty years I have 

 recognized that if we are to build up a strictly scientific 

 theory of organic structural processes, we must separate 

 the doctrine of Descent from Darwinism. It was with this 



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