Page:History of botany (Sachs; Garnsey).djvu/549

] a purer and more definite form for the vegetable physiologists, who turned their attention chiefly to the points mentioned above. It is true that Liebig's work encountered lively opposition from these men also, and the two foremost representatives of vegetable physiology at that time, Schleiden and von Mohl, criticised it unsparingly; this was due partly to the deductive method adopted by Liebig, to which botanists were unaccustomed in physiological questions, and partly to the derogatory expressions in which he indulged against the vegetable physiologists, whom he held responsible with the botanists generally for all the absurdities connected with the humus-theory. Von Mohl asked, and justly, whether de Saussure, Davy, Carl Sprengel, Berzelius and Mulder, the real founders of the theory, were botanists. But it was unnecessary for von Mohl, Schleiden and others to feel touched by Liebig's reproach, at least so far as it was addressed to professed physiologists, for they were no more physiologists than Davy, Berzelius or Mulder. Professed vegetable physioligists, official public representatives of vegetable physiology there were none, and then as now every one who occupied himself occasionally with questions of the kind was called a vegetable physiologist. In this way the contest became a dispute about words, and Liebig, von Mohl and Schleiden lost an excellent opportunity for influencing public opinion in favour of the idea, that it was high time to establish public official representatives of so important a branch of science, who should devote themselves entirely to it; how could it be expected that Professors of botany, who were required by the government and the public to work for the advancement of systematic botany, phytotomy, and medical botany, to give instruction in these subjects, and to devote a large portion of their time to the management of botanic gardens, should do much to promote the study of vegetable physiology, which demands very considerable acquaintance also with physics and chemistry? and where were the laboratories and the instruments for the serious