NEHEMIAH GREW'S "ANATOMY OF PLANTS" 151 



Your Majesty will find, that we are come ashore into a new 

 World, whereof we see no end." 



Nehemiah Grew has sometimes been accused of borrowing 

 from the Italian, Marcello Malpighi, whose great work on the 

 same subject was laid before the Royal Society in 1674. But it 

 is certain that the first part of Grew's work was in the hands 

 of the Bishop of Chester a year before Malpighi's earliest 

 communication reached England, and there seems, I think, no 

 sufficient reason to doubt the essential independence of the 

 English botanist's work. He explains as follows the reasons 

 which induced him to take up the study of plant anatomy : 

 " The first occasion of directing my Thoughts this way, was 

 in the Year 1664, upon reading some, of the many and curious 

 Inventions of Learned Men, in the Bodies of Animals. For 

 considering, that both of them came at first out of the same 

 Hand; and were therefore Contrivances of the same Wisdom: 

 I thence fully assured my self, that it could not be a vain 

 Design ; to seek it in both. And being then newly furnished 

 with a good stock of seeds, in order to raise a Nursery of Plants ; 

 I resolved, besides what I first aimed at, to make the utmost use 

 of them for that purpose : that so I might put somewhat upon 

 that side the Leaf which the best Botanicks had left bare and 

 empty. . . . And although it seemed at first an Objection in my 

 way, That the first projectors seldome bring their business to 

 any good end : yet I also knew, That if Men should stay for 

 an Example in everything ; nothing extraordinary would ever 

 be done." 



Grew refers to the remarks on plant anatomy which occur 

 in Robert Hooke's Micrographia, but justly points out that such 

 observations as he made were merely by the way, and that he 

 never set out definitely to make a complete investigation of the 

 subject. With regard to Grew's methods there is little to be 

 said. He used both naked eye and microscope, and refers to 

 perpendicular, transverse, and oblique sections, " all three being 

 requisite, if not to Observe, yet better to Comprehend, some 

 Things." He held particularly sane views on the education of 

 students : " what is learned," he says, " by their own Observa- 

 tion, will abide much longer in their mind, than what they are 

 only Poynted to, by another." 



When we turn to the special part of the book — the anatomical 

 descriptions of the several organs, — we find that in the root he 



