22 
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF 
mark of scholastic vanity, thus to seal against the majority 
of readers, the very books which profess to make known 
his discoveries. To this, we may answer promptly and 
decidedly in the negative. For, if written either in 
German or in English, the two other languages with which 
he was, probably, the most familiar, they must have 
been sealed against a far greater number of those who are 
ever likely to seek instruction from their pages. A 
few inquisitive botanists are found in every quarter of 
the globe, and the medium of communication between 
them is the same as that of the whole scientific world was 
three centuries ago. It was to these that Schweinitz 
was obliged, from the nature of the case, to address 
himself, and to these he spoke in a language which they 
all, doubtless, understood. 
It may, in the next place, appear singular that so 
great a part of his exertions should have been devoted 
to the cryptogamous races. But to this preference 
he had, by birthright, a sort of hereditary, or de¬ 
rivative national title, since it is to German , Danish, and 
Swedish botanists* that we owe by far the greater part 
of our knowledge of that difficult department. In fact, 
German botany, like German metaphysics, appears to 
deem the obvious, every-day phenomena of a science, 
utterly unworthy of her regards. Phsenogamous plants 
want the charm of an adequate mystery ; things are 
* The botanist will readily recal to mind, in addition to the names of Schwei¬ 
nitz and Muhlenburg, among- ourselves, those of Weber, Sclnvaegrichen, Roth, 
Nees, Fries, Link, Kunz, Schrseder, Tode, Holfman, Hedwig, Withering, 
Gartner, Schaeffer, Batsch, Wahlenberg, Schkuhr, Schwartz, and many others, 
as illustrations, more or less apposite, of our position. 
