xxix 



mechanisch-physiologische Theorie der Abstammungslehre,' in 1884, 

 his scientific career may be said to have closed. 



Nageli was ennobled by King Ludwig II in 1878, and was elected 

 a Foreign Member of the Royal Society in 1881. He continued to 

 hold the Botanical Chair at Munich until his death, at the age of 

 seventy-four, on May 11, 1891. His health, already impaired by ad- 

 vancing years and excessive work, had been further weakened by an 

 attack of influenza in 1890, from the effects of which he had never 

 completely recovered. 



Most of the foregoing details as to Hageli's life have been taken 

 from the appreciative notice in ' Nature ' of October 16, 1891, by 

 Dr. D. H. Scott, who obtained them from the funeral oration (in 

 ' Xeue Ziircher Zeitung,' May 16, 1891) delivered by Professor 

 Cramer, Nageli's whilom colleague. 



With Carl von Nageli disappears the last member, and not the least 

 distinguished, of that triumvirate of workers who, half a century ago, 

 were so largely instrumental in laying the foundation of the scientific 

 botany of to-day. Of his two coadjutors, Hugo von Mohl, the creator 

 of an intelligible vegetable histology, died in 1872 at the age of sixty- 

 seven ; and Matthias Jacob Schleiden — who, though so much of his 

 own work has become obsolete, rendered invaluable service ' in his 

 relatively short botanical career (1837 — 1850; by insisting on the 

 study of development as the only basis of a sound morphology, and 

 by inspiring enthusiasm for research in this direction — survived until 

 1881, having attained the age of seventy-seven. 



It is impossible, in the case of a prolific worker like Nageli, to touch, 

 however briefly, on all or nearly all the important contributions to 

 knowledge which he made. It must suffice to dwell on such of them 

 as may be regarded as epoch-making ; but of these there are many, 

 for it has fallen to the lot of but few scientific workers to discover 

 so many fundamental facts as Nageli did. 



If, as appears probable, the " Beitrage zur Botanik " constitute 

 Xageli's first attempts at research in the field of the new botany, it 

 cannot be maintained that his debut was altogether brilliant. The 

 reason of this comparative failure seems to be that, inspired prob- 

 ably by personal enthusiasm for his master, he undertook these in- 

 vestigations with the object of supporting the Schleidenian theory of 

 cell-formation, and of defending it against the well-grounded criti- 

 cisms of von Mohl and of Unger. The actual work is good, even 

 remarkable for the time, but most of the conclusions, and many even 

 of the observations, are vitiated by the only too obvious parti pris. 

 It is not until he has regained something of his independence of 

 thought that Nageli's genius begins to manifest and assert itself. 

 This is clearly observable in the almost contemporaneous paper on 

 the development of the pollen, where he asserts (p. 17) that the 



