Page:History of botany (Sachs; Garnsey).djvu/212

 Botany appeared all at once as a science rich in subject-matter; Schleiden had not only himself made many investigations and broached new theories, but he everywhere drew attention to what was already before the world and was important; for it is not sufficient as regards the literature of a science that there should be good investigators; it is as necessary that the scientific public, and especially the rising generation of professed students, should be well and sufficiently instructed in the art of distinguishing important from unimportant contributions. It must be distinctly affirmed in this place, that if Schleiden's theory of cell-formation, his strange notion about the embryology of Phanerogams and the like were very quickly shown to be untenable, this does not in the least affect the great historical importance which his writings possess in the sense here indicated.

That others besides Schleiden in the period following 1840 felt strongly, that botany must thenceforward give up its complacent resting in the old ideas, was shown among other things by the addition at this time of new periodicals to the old journal 'Flora.' The 'Botanische Zeitung' was founded by von Mohl and Schlechtendal in 1843, and the 'Zeitschrift für wissenschaftliche Botanik' by Schleiden and Nägeli. The latter, however, only lived three years, from 1844 to 1846, and was filled almost entirely with Nägeli's contributions. Both publications expressly set themselves the task of representing the new aims in the science. The immediate consequence was that 'Flora' braced up its energies, and endeavoured to do more justice to the modern spirit; excellent notices of botanical works now appeared in it under the exclusive management of Fürnrohr.

Schleiden's productivity in the higher sense of the word expended itself in his labours on the elements of scientific botany. His later somewhat discursive writings exerted no great influence on the further development of the science. The ideal which he had set up for scientific botany and had sketched in its larger outlines, could only be realised by the