i 5 4 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



him of the first importance. These fibres he believed to be 

 continuous from cell to cell, and he thought that some parts 

 of the plant consisted of fibres alone, not woven together to form 

 "bladders" or cells. His elaborate comparison with "pillow 

 lace" gives the clearest idea of his mental picture of plant 

 tissues. " The most unfeigned and proper resemblance we can 

 at present, make of the whole Body of a Plant, is, To a piece 

 of fine Bone-Lace, when the Women are working it upon the 

 Cushion, For the Pith, Insertions, and Parenchyma of the Barque, 

 are all extream Fine and Perfect Lace-Work: the Fibres of the 

 Pith running Horizontally, as do the Threds in a Piece of Lace) 

 and bounding the several Bladders of the Pith and Barque, as 

 the Threds do the several Holes of the Lace ; and making up the 

 Insertions without Bladders, or with very small ones, as the same 

 Threds likewise do the close Parts of the Lace, which they call the 

 Cloth-Work. And lastly, both the Lignous and A er-Vessels, stand 

 all Perpendicular, and so cross to the Horizontal Fibres of all the 

 said Parenchymous Parts; even as in a Piece of Lace upon the 

 Cushion, the Pins do to the Threds. The Pins being also con- 

 ceived to be Tubidar, and prolonged to any length ; and the same 

 Lace-Work to be wrought many Thousands of times over and over 

 again, to any thickness or hight, according to the hight of any 

 Plane 



It is for his feeling for morphology that Nehemiah Grew 

 seems to me to have been chiefly remarkable, as witnessed, for 

 instance, by his lucid accounts of the nature of bulbs, and of 

 thorns. In " all Bulbous Roots . . . the strings only, are abso- 

 lute Roots ; the Bulb, actually containing those Parts, which 

 springing up, make the Leaves or Body; and is, as it were, a 

 Great Bud under ground." The Thorns of the Hawthorn "are 

 constituted of all the same substantial Parts whereof the Gcrmen 

 or Bud it self (is), and in a like proportion : which also in their 

 Infancy are set with the resemblances of divers minute Leaves? 

 Tendrils, or as he calls them " Claspers," are regarded as having 

 the natures of stems and roots compounded together, which 

 he ingeniously observes is shown by " their Circumvolutions, 

 wherein they often mutually ascend and descend." He has got 

 hold of the generalisation that the stems of twining plants are 

 apt to have their vascular system concentrated about the central 

 axis. " As to their Spiral Motion, it is to be noted ; That the 

 Wood of all Convolvidd 's or Winder's, stands more close and 



