112 Transactions of the Society. 



of the Microscope ; and that as these have gone hand-in -hand in 

 the past, so in the future they can never be dissevered. 



William Carruthers, in his Presidential address delivered in 

 1902,* notes that Cornelius Drebbel is said to have brought the first 

 compound Microscope to England from Holland in 1619, and that 

 the first application of the Microscope to the examination of the 

 minute structure of plants was made by Eobert Hooke, Secretary of 

 the Koyal Society in 1677, who constructed simple Microscopes 

 and yreatly improved the compound Microscope. Hooke's work is 

 specially interesting to Cambridge men in that much of his histo- 

 logical work preceded that carried out by Nathaniel Grew, who 

 acknowledges his indebtedness to Hooke, and who in all probability 

 worked with the same Microscope. Grew's work was of extreme 

 interest to all botanists, but especially to his fellow-alumni in Cam- 

 bridge, and were it not that Carruthers has given such an admirable 

 account of his training, life and work, I should be tempted to enlarge 

 somewhat fully on Grew's contribution to histology. Even though 

 I refrain from this, 1 cannot help drawing attention to the fact 

 that Grew puts into very concise and convincing form a corrobora- 

 tion of Sir Win. Eoberts's contention referred to elsewhere. Grew 

 was led to his studies by what he noted of the observations of 

 others ; for he says in the preface to his "Anatomy of Plants" (1682), 

 " The first occasion of directing my thought 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 (plants and animals) came at first out of the same Hand, 

 and were, tberefore, the contrivance of the same Wisdom, I thence 

 fully assured myself 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 make 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 botanies had left bare and empty." 



We read Mr. Carruther's defence of Grew and his work with 

 keen interest, especially as he attributes much to Grew without 

 belittling Malpighi, on whose behalf Schleiden makes claims as 

 against Grew's independence, which certainly cannot be upheld. 

 He grants that Italy may well be proud of her son, but that 

 England has no less reason for her pride in Grew. 



Out of this controversy comes the comforting assurance that 

 in all these controversies men's work is fitted into the great mosaic 

 of scientific achievement, each receiving his meed of credit, if not 

 in his own, in a subsequent, generation. To Hooke undoubtedly 

 belongs the discovery of the vegetable cell, a discovery not at first 

 recognized by Grew, but gradually accepted by him. Grew appears 



* See this Journal, 1902, p. 129. 



