THE SPORES OF FERNS 63 



suggests that the value of putting a Clary seed into the eye 

 to bring out a foreign body, which may have lodged there, is 

 due to the presence of the mucilaginous coat. The same seed 

 is still, I believe, used for this purpose, under the name of "eye 

 seed." Grew understood the difference between seeds with, and 

 without endosperm, and gives perfectly clear representations of 

 such albuminous seeds as Ricimis. He describes the cotyledons 

 of the Dock as being immersed in the endosperm, " as in a Tub 

 of Meal or a little pot of pure refin'd Mould, necessary for the 

 first Vegetation of the Radicle'.' 



Grew naturally reckoned the spores of Ferns among seeds. 

 The seed-case of the Harts-tongue is, he says, " of a Silver 

 Colour... of a spherick Figure, and girded about with a sturdy 

 Tendon or Spring^ of the Colour of Gold'. ... So soon as... 

 this Spring is become stark enough, it suddenly breaks the 

 Case into two halfs, like two little cups, and so flings the Seed" 

 of which " ten Thousand are not so big as a white Pepper 

 Corn" 



To give any kind of short summary of Grew's botanical 

 work is well-nigh impossible. Some men are remembered for 

 individual discoveries, and in such cases it is not difficult to 

 give a precis of their contributions. But Nehemiah Grew is 

 remembered because, contemporaneously with Malpighi, he 

 actually created the science of plant anatomy, a subject which, 

 before his day, was practically non-existent. Modern botanists, 

 conscious how small an addition to the fabric is now regarded 

 as a satisfactory life-work, must stand amazed and somewhat 

 humbled before the broad and sound foundations laid by this 

 seventeenth century physician. It is no less than two hundred 

 and forty years since Grew sent in his first treatise to the 

 Royal Society, so it is scarcely wonderful that a number of his 

 results have been rejected in course of time. It is far more 

 remarkable that so many of his conclusions and those the 

 more essential ones have been merely confirmed and extended 

 by later work. Great however as were his actual contributions 

 to botanical knowledge, they were perhaps less important than 

 the far-reaching service which he rendered in helping to free 

 biological thought from the cramping belief that the one and 



