NEES VON ESENBECK, CHRISTIAN GorrstmED 1776-1858; he Germany; educated at the Darmstadt gymnasium and the university of Jena. He studied medi cine, after practicing which, for a short time, he was called to the chair of botany at the university of Erlangen. He was soon made president of the Leopoldine academy of naturalists, and professor of botany at Bonn, where he was one of the found ers of a new botanical institution. In 1830 he accepted the posts of professor of botany and director of the botanic garden at Breslau. He took an active interest in the agitations which preceded the revolutionary movement of 1848. and was a promi nent member of a Breslau religious organization named the Kristkatholiken, and aimirg. at various charitable and humanitarian purposes. • He lived at Berlin for a time in 1848, participating in the democratic agitation then at its height throughout Europe. Re turning to Breslau, lie established a "fraternity of workingmen," with the object of diffusing education among laborers, maintaining harmony between them and their em ployers, etc. This society excited UN hostility of time government, which ordered him to dissolve his connection with it. A prosecution was soon instituted against hint for living with a woman without having been divorced from his wife. Both, this prosecu
tion and his deposition from the chair of botany in 1899, were supposed to he due to political motives, and the distrust felt by the government for his democratic principles and influence with the laboring classes. Deprived of his salary, he had to sell his library and Ids collection of botanical specimens. In spite of his reformatory activity, and his researches in regard to spiritualism, in which he was a believer, he found time to con tinue his botanical studies, and became one of the first botanists of Europe. In his Handbook of Botany, 1821, he developed the theory advanced by Goethe in phosis of Rants, that all the parts of the flower are only variations of the leaf. This work had been preceded by his Fresh Water Alga., 1814: by System of Pawl and Sponges, 1816; and by Rant Substance, 1819, in which he was assisted by Rothe and Bischof. He pub lished, in 1833. Genera et Species Asterearam; in 1836. Sysfcna Laurinarnm; and in 1841, Kam Afriew Anstrallarie Illustrationes Monographico. In 1852 appeared the first volume of his Universal iiiyintology.qt VateR on cryplogrimous plants, and in this branch Of botany hiS chief Work is of the European lirater-Liver wort, 1833-38.