The President's Address. By Wm. Carruthers. 139 



mere cavities in a homogeneous substance." The two interpretations 

 of the structure of the vegetable cell could not be entertained by any 

 sane man ; they certainly were not entertained by Grew. 



One regrets to find that Sachs in his ' History of Botany ' (trans- 

 lated by Garnsay and Balfour, 1890), repents the charges, though in 

 a somewhat modified form. He says, " As to which of the two [Mal- 

 pighi and Grew] the priority belongs has been repeatedly discussed, 

 though the facts to be considered are undoubted. The first part of 

 Malpighi's large work, the ' Anatomes Plantarum Idea,' which ap- 

 peared at a later time, is dated Bologna, November 1, 1671 ; and 

 Grew, who from 1677 was Secretary to the Eoyal Society, informs us 

 in the preface to liis anatomical work of 1682, that Malpighi laid his 

 work before the Society on December 7, 1671, the same day on 

 which Grew presented his treatise, ' The Anatomy of Plants Begun,' 

 in print, having already tendered it in manuscript on the 11th May 

 in the same year. But it must be observed that these are not the 

 dates of the larger works of these two men, but only of the pre- 

 liminary communications, in which they give a brief summary of the 

 researches they had then made ;' the fuller and more complete 

 treatises appeared afterwards ; the preliminary communications formed 

 the first part of the later works and to some extent the introduction 

 to them. The first part of Malpighi's longer account was laid before 

 the Society in 1674, while Grew produced a series of essays on differ- 

 ent parts of vegetable anatomy between 1672 and 1682; and these 

 appeared together with his first communication in a large folio volume 

 under the title, ' The Anatomy of Plants,' in 1682. Thus Grew had 

 opportunity to use Malpighi's ideas in his later compositions ; he 

 actually did so, and the important point as regards the question of 

 priority is, that where he makes use of Malpighi he distinctly quotes 

 from him. No more is necessary to remove the serious imputation 

 which Schleiden has made against Grew." 



Sachs' modified charge is also based on erroneous dates. He was 

 unaware that the larger portion of Grew's ' Anatomy of Plants ' was 

 published in 1672, 1673, and 1675, the latter year being the date of 

 the reception and publication of Malpighi's ' Anatome.' I have been 

 able to discover only a single reference to Malpighi in Grew's 

 ' Anatomy of Plants,' and there (p. 73) he quotes, as Sachs says, the 

 words of the ' Anatome,' but for the purpose of correcting and adding 

 to Malpighi's statement. 



The fact is that Grew and Malpighi were original investigators 

 of plant anatomy. A comparison of their published works on this 

 subject shows that throughout they are entirely independent, fre- 

 quently differing in their interpretations, and often complementary 

 to each other. Grew was first in the field. Both men were no doubt 

 moved with a common purpose expressed thus by Grew, " that the 

 same subject, being prosecuted by two hands, would be the more 

 illustrated by the different examples produced by both ; and that the 



