WILHELM HOFMEISTER. 
29 ? 
It is clear that he who undertook so severe a task should have 
to depend rather upon explanations and general propositions than 
upon a sure solution which is to be had only through experimenta¬ 
tion. But a beginning had to be made, and for it we must thank 
Hofmeister s book. Its influence is somewhat limited in that it 
is difficult to read. Facts and conclusions are crowded together 
in the highest degree, and it is not lacking in errors of presenta¬ 
tion which make the understanding of it difficult. But the 
" General Morphology ” is nevertheless a powerful piece of work. 
And I may perhaps be allowed to add that it was the first botanical 
book which I bought as a young student, and that, in spite of the 
difficulty of understanding it, it made an impression on my mind 
which has lasted my whole life. It should also be noted that 
Hofmeister pointed out the importance of what we now call 
“ mutation ” and was suggestive in many other ways. 
In his “Allgemeine Morphologic” (p.564) he says, “One of the 
most striking and remarkable facts in the variation of plants with¬ 
out any doubt is the suddenness of wide-reaching differences from 
the usual conformation. . . . The new form arises not by summa¬ 
tion of small aberrations from the normal courses of develop¬ 
ment all pointing in the same direction; it appears at once, com¬ 
plete in its wide divergence from the parental form.” 
In particular by this book and by his “ Zelllehre ” he set botany 
free from the narrow confines which threatened to stifle it. Un¬ 
der the influence of Nageli the view had sprung up that the 
most important thing for morphology is the arrangement of cells 
in young plant parts, and that the whole of growth is conditioned 
by the manner in which cells divide and are arranged. Hof¬ 
meister, however, for the first time conceived the embryonic plant 
part as a whole in itself, and cell division in the particular cells 
as something secondary, and thus paved the way for Sach’s well 
known studies on cell arrangement and growth. The doctrine of 
the cell owes much in other ways to Hofmeister, although I can¬ 
not here go further into details. It may, however, be pointed 
out that Hofmeister was active also as a physiologist. He carried 
out important research on “ bleeding ” and upon the movement 
of water in plants, and supplied the basis for our knowledge of 
