Page:History of botany (Sachs; Garnsey).djvu/208

 way. This man was, born at Hamburg in 1804, and for many years Professor in Jena. Endowed with somewhat too great love of combat, and armed with a pen regardless of the wounds it inflicted, ready to strike at any moment, and very prone to exaggeration, Schleiden was just the man needed in the state in which botany then was. His first appearance on the scene was greeted with joy by the most eminent among those who afterwards contributed to the real advance of the science, though their paths it is true diverged considerably at a later period, when the time of reconstruction was come. If we were to estimate Schleiden's merit only by the facts which he discovered, we should scarcely place him above the level of ordinarily good botanists; we should have to reckon up a list of good monographs, numerous refutations of ancient errors and the like; the most important of the theories which he proposed, and over which vigorous war was waged among botanists during many years, have long since been set aside. His true historical importance has been already intimated; his great merit as a botanist is due not to what he did as an original investigator, but to the impulse he gave to investigation, to the aim and object which he set up for himself and others, and opposed in its greatness to the petty character of the text-books. He smoothed the way for those who could and would do really great service; he created, so to speak, for the first time an audience for scientific botany capable of distinguishing scientific work from frivolous dilettanteism. Whoever wished from this time forward to take part in the discussion of botanical subjects must address all his powers to the task, for he would be judged by another standard than had hitherto prevailed.

Schleiden, who had commenced his botanical labours with some important researches in anatomy and the history of development, the most valuable of which in matter and form was an enquiry into the development of the ovule before fertilisation (1837), composed also a comprehensive text-book