Note 36 — Chapter III · Development of the Natural System under the Influence of the Dogma of the Constancy of Species. 1759-1850.

Joseph Gärtner was born at Calw in Würtemberg in 1732, and died in 1791. He commenced his studies in Göttingen in 1751, where he was a pupil of Haller. He travelled into Italy, France, Holland, and England in order to make the acquaintance of famous naturalists, and worked also at physics and zoology. In 1760 he was Professor of Anatomy in Tübingen, and in 1768 became Professor of Botany at St. Petersburg; but finding himself unable to bear the climate, he returned to Calw in 1770, and gave himself up entirely to his book, ‘De fructibus et seminibus plantarum,’ which he had already commenced. Banks and Thunberg, one of whom had returned from a voyage round the world, the other from Japan, handed over to him the collections of fruits which they had made. His persistent study, partly with the microscope, brought him near to blindness. There is an interesting life of Gärtner by Chaumeton in the ‘Biographie Universelle.’