132 Transactions of the Society. 



was in the year 1664, upon reading some of the many and curious 

 inventions of learned men, in the bodies of animals. For, con- 

 sidering that both of them (plants and animals) came at first out of 

 the same Hand, and were, therefore, the contrivances of the same 

 Wisdom, 1 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 botanicks had left bare and empty." 



He watched the progress of germination in his garden, and re- 

 corded his observations. He noticed the difference between the 

 monocotyledonous seed of wheat and the dicotyledonous seed of the 

 bean, though he did not, of course, realise the importance of his 

 observation. In 1668 he showed the results of his work to his half- 

 brother, Dr. Henry Sampson, who approved of his investigations, 

 and encouraged him to proceed with them ; and having completed 

 the manuscript of his first book, ' The Anatomy of Vegetables Begun,' 

 lie communicated, in 1670, a part of it to Mr. Oldenburg, then 

 Secretary of the Royal Society. After reading the manuscript, 

 Oldenburg delivered it, on his own motion, to Dr. John Wilkins, 

 Bishop of Chester, who, after perusal, produced it at a meeting of the 

 Royal Society. The Fellows desired to see the remainder of the work, 

 which being presented to them, was perused by the President, Lord 

 Brouncker. On the 11th May, 1671, the Council ordered it to be 

 printed by the printer of the Society. The formal order to the 

 printer was dated 9th November, 1671, and on the 30th of the same 

 month Grew was admitted a Fellow of the Society. The printed book 

 was delivered complete at the meeting of the Royal Society on the 

 7th December, 1671. ' The Anatomy of Vegetables Begun ' is a small 

 octavo of 186 pages, with dedication, preface, and contents prefixed, 

 and the explanation of the plates appended. The plates are three in 

 number, with twenty-nine figures. The text deals with the germi- 

 nating seed, the structure of the root, stem, branch, leaf, flower, fruit, 

 and the formation of seed. The work was mainly done without the help 

 of the Microscope. In his preface to the original edition of his 

 ' Anatomy ' he says : — " What we have performed thus far lieth, for 

 the most part, open to the use and improvement of all men. Only 

 in some places, and chiefly in the third chapter, we have taken in the 

 help of glasses ; wherein after we had finished the whole composure, 

 some observations made by that ingenious and learned person, Mr. 

 Hooke, a worthy member of the Royal Society, my much honoured 

 friend, and by him communicated to me, were super-added : as likewise 

 some others also microscopical, of my own, which his [observations] 

 gave me the occasion of making." In the third chapter, ' Of the 

 Trunk' (page 71), he further acknowledges his debt to Hooke, espe- 

 cially in his investigation of the fibro- vascular bundles, which he 



