Prof. M. Leclerc du Sablon

Abstract

CONGRATULATIONS are to bo extended to Prof. Mathieu Leclerc du Sablon, who attains his eightieth birthday on March 25. Prof. Leclerc du Sablon is probably tho last living member of the famous group of French botanists who at tho end of the nineteenth century made very important contributions to the study of plant anatomy. From 1883 until 1890 ho was working in Paris at the Ecole Normale Superieure, and later at the Natural History Museum under Van Tieghem, his father-in-law and teacher. During this period he produced a series of important papers on various subjects in some of which are facts now taught to every student of elementary botany. His studies on the dehiscenco mechanisms of anthers in the flowering plants and of the sporangia in the Archegoniatse are especially noteworthy; he was the first to discover the mechanism of the annulus in the fern sporangium. Other important contributions were papers on the structure and physiology of tendrils, on the haustoria of parasitic flowering plants, on tho development and comparative structure of the sporophytos of Liverworts, and on the development of the vascular system in young fern plants. In 1890 ho was appointed professor of botany in the University of Toulouse, a post which he held for thirty years. His extensive knowledge of plants found expression in the “Cours de Botanique”, a large text-book written in collaboration with Gaston Bonnier, his brother-in-law and former colleague. The first part of this work appeared in 1901; but it was not completed until 1933 when, after the death of Bonnior, tho last part dealing with plant physiology was published. His activities have covered an exceptionally wide field, and his influence on the development of botany, especially in France, has been very considerable.