CHAP, ii.] Phytotomy in the Eighteenth Century. 249 



what mischief Grew did with his theory of the fibrous structure 

 of the cell-walls, and how the expression cell-tissue literally 

 taken led the botanists here named and others into utterly 

 incorrect ideas. The works of Du Hamel, Comparetti, and 

 Senebier show that such misconceptions were not confined to 

 Germany, and Hill, a countryman of Grew, according to von 

 Mohl's account pictured to himself cells as cups standing one 

 above another, closed below and open above. 



Baron von Gleichen-Russworm (1717-1783), privy coun- 

 sellor to the Margrave of Anspach, gave much attention to 

 the perfecting of the mechanical arrangements of the micro- 

 scope, but his plates themselves show how strangely un- 

 suitable these arrangements were. With these instruments 

 he made many observations, which are recorded in two 

 voluminous works, 'Das Neueste aus dem Reich der Pflanzen ' 

 (17 64) and 'Auserlesene mikroskopische Entdeckungen' (1777- 

 1781). But these works contain little or nothing about micro- 

 scopic anatomy or the structure of vegetable cells. His 

 observations with the microscope are chiefly devoted to 

 processes of fertilisation and to proving that spermatozoa are 

 contained in the pollen 1 , and in connection with these 

 subjects he gives magnified figures of many small flowers, 

 some of them beautifully executed ; these figures must have 

 made his works very instructive to many in their time. He 

 saw the stomata, which Grew had already discovered, on the 

 leaves of ferns, but took them for the male organs of fertilisation, 

 which at the same time showed that he was still unacquainted 

 with the existence of stomata in phanerogams. 



CASPAR FRIEDRICH WOLFF 2 in his efforts in phytotomy stands 



1 This subject will be noticed again in the history of the sexual theory. 



2 C. F. Wolff was born at Berlin in 1733. He studied anatomy under 

 Meckel and botany under Gleditsch, in the Collegium Medico-chirurgicum 

 in that city. He afterwards resorted to the University of Halle, and there 

 made acquaintance with the philosophy of Leibnitz and Wolff, which 

 predominates too much in his dissertation, ' Theoria Generationis ' (1759)- 



