34 HISTORY OF PHYTOPATHOLOGY 



the writers on plant pathology of this period were the 

 elder De Candolle, the noted French savant, and the 

 German writers, Schleiden and Sprengel. Sachs, in his 

 History of Botany, characterizes this period (1800-60) 

 as the one in which "botanical science developed from 

 one founded on misinterpreted observation and natural 

 philosophy to a real science founded on investigation 

 and research." While this characterization could 

 scarcely apply to the plant pathology of this period, 

 it certainly does to that of the following period. Never- 

 theless this revolution in botanical thought influenced 

 powerfully and made possible a similar revolution in 

 phytopathologic thought during the last half of the 

 19th century. 



The first and most characteristic work of the Ungerian 

 period is that by Franz Unger, after whom the period is 

 named. Franz Joseph Andreas Nicholas Unger^ was 

 born at Leutschach, South Germany, in 1800, and died 

 in 1870. He took his degree of doctor of philosophy in 

 law at the age of twenty; studied and practised medicine 

 for the next fifteen years at Vienna and in the Tyrol. 

 While stationed as army surgeon at the latter place he 

 gave much of his time to botany and plant pathology, 

 publishing as a result of his studies among other things 

 the work referred to above. It was here that he main- 

 tained a plant disease garden, probably the first of its 

 kind. He devoted the remainder of his life to the teach- 

 ing of botany, being for fifteen years professor of vege- 

 table physiology at the University of Vienna, from where 

 he wrote several books on plant physiology. 



' Wittrock, in Acta Horti Bergiani, 3 : 3 : 86 and table 56, gives his 

 name as Franz Xaver Unger. 



