[39] Stephen Ladislaus Endlicher was born at Pressburg in 1805, and abandoning the study of theology became Scriptor in the Imperial Library at Vienna in 1828, and in 1836 Custos of the botanical department of the Imperial Collection of Natural History. Having graduated at the University in 1840, he became Professor of Botany and Director of the Botanic Garden. His library and herbarium, valued at 24,000 thalers, he presented to the State, and with his private means founded the Annalen des Wiener-Museums, purchased botanical collections and expensive botanical books, and published his own works and works of other writers. His official salary was small, and having exhausted his resources in these various expenses, he put an end to his own life in March 1849. Endlicher was not only one of the most eminent systematists of his day, but a philologist also, and a good linguist. He wrote among other things a Chinese grammar. See ‘Linnaea,’ vol. xxxiii (1864 and 1865), p. 583.
[40] John Lindley, Professor of Botany in the University of London, was born at Chatton near Norwich in 1799, and died in London in 1865.
[41] Auguste de Saint Hilaire was born at Orleans in 1779, and died there in 1853; he was Professor at Paris, and in 1840 published his ‘Leçons de Botanique comprenant principalement la Morphologie Végétale,’ etc. This work contains a somewhat diffuse account of P. de Candolle’s doctrine of symmetry, together with Goethe’s theory of metamorphosis and Schimper’s doctrine of phyllotaxis, and his own views also on classification founded on the comparative morphology of the day. It is marked by fewer errors than will be found in Lindley’s theoretical writings, but it is less profound, and touches only incidentally on fundamental questions; at the same time it possesses historical interest as giving a lucid description of the state of morphology before 1840.
[42] See Wigand, ‘Geschichte und Kritik der Metamorphose,’ Leipzig, 1846, p. 38.
[43] See Goethe’s collected works in forty volumes, Cotta, 1858, vol. xxxvi.
[44] See Haeckel, ‘Natürliche Schöpfungsgeschichte,’ ed. 4, 1873, p. 80.
[45] Louis Marie Aubert du Petit-Thouars was born in Anjou in 1758 and collected plants during many years in the Mauritius, Madagascar, and Bourbon. He was afterwards Director of the Botanic Garden at Roule, and became Member of the Academy in 1820. He died in 1831. His articles in the ‘Biographie Universelle’ prove him to have been a writer of ability. Preconceived opinions interfered with the success of his own investigations, especially into the increase in thickness of woody stems, and obstinate adherence to such notions prevented an unbiassed interpretation of what he saw. See Flora, 1845, p. 439.
[46] K. F. Schimper, born in Mannheim in 1803, was at first a student of theology in Heidelberg, but having afterwards travelled as a paid collector of plants in the south of France, he applied himself to the study of medicine. From 1828 to 1842 he was employed as a teacher in the University of Munich, though occasionally engaged in exploring the Alps, Pyrenees, and other districts, in the service of the King of Bavaria. It was during this period of his life that he composed his most important works on phyllotaxis, and essays on the former extension of glaciers, and on the glacial period. He returned to the Palatinate in 1842, and died at Schwetzingen in 1867 in the enjoyment of a pension from the Grand duke of Baden.
[47] See Hofmeister, ‘Allgemeine Morphologie’ (1868), pp. 471, 479, and Sachs, ‘Lehrbuch der Botanik,’ ed. 4 (1874), p. 195.
[48] See Nägeli, ‘Beiträge zur Wissenschaftlichen Botanik’ (1858), I, pp. 40, 49.