Wilhelm Hofmeister: the Work and Life of a Nineteenth Century Botanist

Abstract

THE Ray Society has just published a translation into English of a volume which appeared in Leipzig in 1924 to celebrate the centenary of the birth of Wilhelm Hofmeister, a botanist to whom is generally assigned the premier place in plant-morphology during the nineteenth century. This version follows as a fitting sequel to the volume of Hofmeister's researches published in English in 1862 by the same Society under the title “On the Germination, Development and Fructification of the Higher Cryptogamia, and on the Fructification of the Coniferæ,” which for more than sixty years has been held as a classic by all English-speaking students of plant-morphology. The volume last named was, however, not merely a translation of works already published by him in German: its text was specially revised and enlarged by the author himself for the Ray Society, so as to be a complete record of all known at that time on the subject to which it related. Thus on two occasions, far apart in date, the Ray Society has promoted the interest of botany by presenting in English works concerned with othe same great discoverer.

Wilhelm Hofmeister: the Work and Life of a Nineteenth Century Botanist.

By Prof. Dr. K. von Goebel. With Biographical Supplement by Frau Professor Ganzenmüller. Translated into English by H. M. Bower, and edited botanically by Prof. F. O. Bower. (Ray Society Volume (No. 111) for 1925.) Pp. xi + 202. (London: Dulau and Co., Ltd., 1926.) 12s. 6d. net.