A History of Botany, 1860–1900, being a Continuation of Sachs' “History of Botany, 1530–1860”

Abstract

BOTANICAL science has been fortunate in having had as historian a botanist of such wide knowledge and mature judgment as the late professor of botany in the University of Würzburg. Sachs' “History of Botany,” which covers the period from the sixteenth century up to, 1860, will always rank, not only as a standard history of botany, but also as the model of a critical study of the growth and progress of scientific thought. Botanists will be grateful to the delegates of the Clarendon Press for their decision to arrange for the continuation of the history of botany up to the close of the nineteenth century, the latter half of which has witnessed such a surprising development of the biological sciences under the stimulus of Darwin's “Origin of Species,” published a year before the date at which Sachs' “History of Botany” stops. Sachs himself lays the greatest stress upon the change in outlook in morphological and systematic botany produced by Darwin's epoch-making work; but though he frequently refers to the new conception of evolution, he does not deal in detail with the Darwinian theory of evolution, owing, no doubt, to his conviction that it marked the beginning of a new era, rather than the close of the period under his consideration.