The work of Treviranus[1] to which the judges at Göttingen awarded the second place, is much less comprehensive than those of his competitors; the style is inferior to Link's, and may even be called clumsy. But the much better figures show at once that Treviranus was the more accurate observer, and his work, in spite of the inferiority of its style, is of far higher value on account of the attention paid in it to the history of development; Treviranus laid greater stress on this method than either Link or Rudolphi, and it led him to form views on some of the fundamental questions of phytotomy, in which we see the germs of theories afterwards perfected by von Mohl. His account of the formation of cell-tissue is mainly that of Sprengel, and therefore an unfortunate one; but nevertheless his observations on the composition of wood and the nature of vessels were as good and correct as could be expected from the condition of the microscope at the time. He made one discovery of considerable value, that of the intercellular spaces in parenchyma, but he lessened its merit by filling these passages with sap, and even describing its movement. Woody fibres are due, he thinks, to strong
- ↑ Ludolf Christian Treviranus, born at Bremen in 1779, became Doctor of Medicine of Jena in 1801, and practised at first in his native town, where he became a teacher at the Lyceum in 1807. In 1812 he accepted the professorship in Rostock vacated by Link, and was again his successor in Breslau. In 1830 he exchanged posts with C. G. Nees von Esenbeck, who was a professor in Bonn; he died in that town in 1864. In the first part of his life he occupied himself chiefly with vegetable anatomy and physiology, afterwards with the determination and correction of species. His first works, which are noticed in the text, and the treatises on sexuality and the embryology of the Phanerogams, published between 1815 and 1828, are the most important in a historical point of view. His 'Physiologie der Gewächse' in two volumes (1835-1838) is still of value for its accurate information on the literature of the subject; but it can scarcely be said to have contributed to the advance of physiology, for its author adhered in it to the old views, and especially to the notion of the vital force, at a time when new ideas were already asserting themselves. The 'Botanische Zeitung' for 1864, p. 176, contains a notice of his life.
