
414 THE AMERICAN NATURALIST. 
views, and something of a protest against the Schmitzian principles. 
At eighty years of age one does not readily give up the principles 
upon which one’s life work has been based, but every system, when 
it has done its work, must give place to something else, at least until 
our knowledge has advanced far beyond its present state. 
But the Agardhian system has been very useful in its day, and 
with the death of its author we lose one of the most conspicuous 
figures in the botanical field. Born in 181 3, the son of C. A. Agardh, 
the foremost algologist of his time, his publications range from 1836 
to rgor, the first part of the work whose last part we have just 
noticed appearing in 1848. His main characteristics were his quick 
grasp of a situation, however complicated ; his unerring instinct for 
really important characters; his prompt recognition of true affinities. 
With this type of mind, the toilsome, plodding investigation required 
by modern conditions was not to be expected ; but it was the type of 
mind needed to bring order out of the chaos of conflicting schemes 
prevailing at the time, and to arrange the great numbers of new 
forms coming to light in all parts of the world. 
In person, as in mind, Agardh might be classed with the Norse 
giants. Tall, well formed, athletic, dignified, serenely confident of 
his position, he was a benevolent, gracious potentate of botany. 
Very liberal in the distribution of specimens, he yet, like all royal 
personages, held some in favor and some in disfavor, and more than 
one private student in America has received from him a finer set of 
his algz than can be found in Berlin, or some other great botanical 
centers. The name Agardhia having been used in honor of his 
father, Agardhiella, a genus of red algz with one handsome species 
on our Atlantic coast and one on the Pacific coast commemorates 
him, while many species bear his name. The red algae were his 
special field, and in spite of all of the modern advances it will be 
long before his works cease to be the place to which one will naturally 
first turn when studying these plants. 
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