THE RELATION OF PLANT PHYSIOLOGY TO THE OTHER 



SCIENCES. 1 



By Dr. Julius Wiesner, 



Rector of the University of Vienna. 



Most Worthy Assemblage: In entering upon the honorable but 

 also responsible office of rector of our university I shall first perform 

 the duty of thanking my honorable colleagues for the trust which 

 placed me in this position of high esteem. 



Few institutions have outlived the century so vigorously as the 

 rectorate of this university, which has become more and more strength- 

 ened by the course of time. The reason for this lies not only in the 

 purposeful end of this office, but equally in this, that each rector placed 

 in the balance his greatest possible sacrifice toward the fulfillment of 

 his task of representing, for the time, this highest academical honor. 

 So each rector has become an example for his successor for the most 

 conscientious fulfillment of duty. So accrued to the office an authority 

 which will make it possible to exercise a discreet power in fulfilling 

 the assumed responsibilities, as well as in upholding the honors and 

 rights of the office when sustained by the wisdom of the academic 

 senate, by the willing cooperation of all colleagues, and by the trustful 

 demeanor of the academic youth, who have always found in the rector 

 the promoter and chosen solicitor of their true interests. 



In the alternation of faculties, and in view of the alternation between 

 members of the mathematical-natural-science and of the philosophical- 

 historical groups of professorships (a principle observed by common 

 consent in the philosophical faculty), the rectorship after a period of 

 five years fell to a representative of the first-named scientific group. 

 L am grateful from a special combination of circumstances for the 

 honor of bearing the rectorate in a year in which Austria celebrates 

 the fiftieth-year jubilee of His Majesty the Emperor. You have just 

 heard from the lips of my honored predecessor what preparations have 



'Inaugural address delivered on the 24th of October, 1898, iu the festival hall of 

 the University of Vienna. Translated from the original German, published at 

 Vienna, 1898. 



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