On the germination, development, and fructification of the higher cryptogamia and on the fructification of coniferae

HOFMEISTER, WHILHELM (1824-77). On the germination, development, and fructification of the higher cryptogamia and on the fructification of coniferae. London: Ray Society, 1862. FIRST EDITION IN ENGLISH, greatly supplemented and revised by the author from the German of 1851. 8 vo. Orig. cloth. xvii, (1), 506 pp. Sixty-five lithographed plates by Tuffen West after the author's drawings. A very good, crisp copy, partially unopened. "Entirely self-taught, Hofmeister attained full professorship and rank among the foremost botanists of the 1800's. He revealed the process of fertilization in non-flowering plants (cryptogams) as a regular alternation of sexual and asexual generations in the mosses, ferns, horsetails and liverworts. The asexual generation propagated by means of spores, alternating with one in which spermatozoids unite with ova." (Heralds of Science 34). "…the most outstanding figure among a constellation of brilliant botanists of the century, and one of the great botanists of all time…" (A. G. Morton, 'History of botanical science', 1981). Epochal Achievements, no. 89A.