SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES 1 63 

 however, but natural in the circumstances that these comparisons should 

 lead to false conclusions, and, as a matter of fact, they did to a great extent 

 prevent Malpighi from taking advantage of the promising material for study, 

 which otherwise he might possibly have been able to do. Thus he compares 

 the buds, out of which gradually sprout leaves and branches, with the ovary 

 and the uterus; then he deals with the flowers and carefully compares their 

 special parts in different plants; as he fails to clear up the question of their 

 sexuality he advances the theory that the flowers serve to purify the juices 

 of the plants before germination, just as menstruation precedes pregnancy. 

 He studied the evolution of the vegetable substance in a number of different 

 seeds, but seeks to identify therewith the uterus, the Fallopian tube, the 

 umbilicus, and the amnion, which naturally leads him to extravagant con- 

 clusions. Malpighi devoted special attention to the study of gall-formations 

 in a number of vegetable forms; he is fully convinced that they are produced 

 by insects, but on the other hand he found that the tubercles on the roots of 

 pulse plants are not produced by insects, though he failed to find any other 

 explanation of their origin.^ He also studied and speculated on a number of 

 other malformations in plants; with regard to the tubers in many plants, 

 he is of the firm opinion that they contain reserve nutriment. He is again 

 tempted, however, by the theory of the nutriment of plants, with which 

 he closes his work, to make dangerous comparisons with the conditions ob- 

 taining in the animal kingdom. 



The other creator of plant anatomy 

 At the same time, however, as Malpighi submitted the first part of his vege- 

 table anatomy to the Royal Society, that society had sent to the printers 

 another work on the same subject compiled independently of Malpighi by 

 an English doctor, Nehemiah Grew. Born in i6i8. Grew was the son of a 

 clergyman who during the great Civil War joined the opponents of the Crown 

 and so, upon the return of Charles II, was deprived of his benefice. His son, 

 who was then an undergraduate at Cambridge, went (presumably for the 

 same reason) to continue his studies abroad. In 1671 he graduated at Leyden, 

 with a dissertation on the fluids of the nervous system. He then settled down 

 as a practitioner in a provincial town, but, thanks to the reputation he gained 

 by his work in vegetable anatomy, he was able within a short time to move 

 to London, where he applied himself to both medical practice and research, 

 eventually becoming secretary to the Royal Society. He died in lyiz. 



As a scientist Grew concentrated almost exclusively upon vegetable anat- 

 omy, whereby his investigations at once acquire a different character from 

 those of Malpighi, in that the latter's constantly repeated comparisons with 

 human and animal anatomy are altogether lacking. Grew also studied the 



^ It is only in our own time that it has been established that they are produced by 

 bacteria. 



