Unmarried, his pleasures were in his laboratory and library, and in perfecting optical apparatus and microscopic preparations, for which he showed extraordinary manual skill.

[2] The process of cell division as observed under a microscope was first discovered by Hugo von Mohl in 1835 as he worked on green algae Cladophora glomerata.

[3] Mohl's writings cover a period of forty-four years; the most notable of them were republished in 1845 in a volume entitled Vermischte Schriften (For lists of his works see Botanische Zeitung, 1872, p. 576, and Royal Soc.

Clearly the author of such researches was the man to collect into one volume the theory of cell-formation, and this he did in his treatise Die vegetabilische Zelle (1851), a short work translated into English (Ray Society, 1852).

[2] Mohl's early investigations on the structure of palms, of cycads, and of tree ferns permanently laid the foundation of all later knowledge of this subject: so also his work on Isoetes (1840).