HEDWIG, John, a botanist of eminence, was born aι Cronstadt, in Transylvania, in October 1730, being descended of a family originally Saxon. In his earlier yean he discovered a strong attachment to the study of botany in which he afterwards excelled. On the death of his fa ther, he was left with very little to support him. The farm of Gerlach led him to Zittau in Lausatia, where he prose cuted his studies for three years, assisted by the generosity of different benefactors. He studied philosophy, mathematics, and medicine, at Leipsic, where he was distinguished for his diligence and regularity of deportment. Ht afterwards assisted Ludwig in the arrangement of his library, anatomical museum, and botanical garden; and in 175t he entered into the family of Bose, professor of botany, foi whom he prepared plants for demonstration, and attended patients in the public infirmary. In 1759 he took the degree of doctor of physic, and practised at Chemnitz in Saxony, where he entered into the married state.
[7:11:206]

It was customary with him to walk into the fields at five in the morning to contemplate the beauties of nature, to visit his patients after breakfast, and to spend the afternoon and evening in examining such plants as he had collected during his early excursions. He particularly applied himself to the investigation of the grasses, and also of the whole cryptogamie class of plants, which botanists at that period had greatly neglected. At the age of forty he taught himself to draw and paint the objects which he had discovered, and the compound microscope which he received from Koehler of Dresden greatly assisted him in those researches. By the persuasion of his second wife, whom he married about a year after the death of his first, he was prevailed on, in 1781, to settle at Leipsic, where he published his great work, entitled Fundamentum Historice Naturalis Muscorum Frondosorum, in which he gave an accurate history of mosses from his own observations, illustrated the whole with appropriate plates, and discovered such sagacity, industry, and profound research, as astonished all the botanists of his time, and induced them to pay more attention to this curious subject. He gained the prize given by the Petersburg Academy for his curious and excellent treatise, entitled Theoria Generationis et Fructificationis Plantarum Cryptogamicarum, Linnaei more, propriis Observationibus et Experimentis superstructa, published in 1784.

His literary reputation increased his medical practice; he was chosen physician to the town-guards in 1784, and two years afterwards he became professor of medicine in the university. In 1789 he was chosen ordinary professor of botany, and superintendent of the physic garden. He corrected the false notions which then prevailed respecting the efficacy of the medulla or pith, the perforation of the flowers, the excrements of plants, the increase of the vessels of vegetables, and the genuine use of the leaves. By the death of a favourite daughter, who sunk under a consumption at the age of sixteen, he received a severe shock; and a catarrhal affection, followed by a nervous fever, deprived the world of his services on the 7th of February 1799, in the sixty-eighth year of his age.

It is agreed on all hands that Dr Hedwig was a man of great modesty, which is the usual concomitant of extraordinary talents; that he was friendly and benevolent, upright in his dealings, not solicitous about wealth, and free from parade both in teaching and in writing. In the forests of Hispaniola there is an evergreen tree, the name of which, hedwigia balsamijera, was intended to perpetuate his memory. He left behind him two sons, one a painter of eminence at Magdeburg, and the other Dr Romanus Adolphus Hedwig, who is known to the botanical world by several publications.