THE ANGIOSPERMAE : HIGHER FLOWERING PLANTS 783 



Historical Sketch of Angiosperm Anatomy. 



The study of the anatomy of Angiosperms began in the seventeenth 

 century in the hands of two men who worked quite independently of each 

 other ; Marcello Malpighi (1628-94) (Fig. 782) and Nehemiah Grew (1641- 

 1712) (Fig. 783). It is a remarkable fact that preliminary treatises by the 

 two men were presented to the Royal Society of London, of which Grew 

 was Secretary, on the same day, 7th December 1671. These were followed 

 by two substantial works : Malpighi's " Anatomes Plantarum Idea " in 

 1674 and Grew's " Anatomic of Plants " in 1682. 



Malpighi was already famous as a human anatomist before he turned 

 his attention to plants, but Grew started out with an economic idea, 

 to find out how timber grew, that commodity being greatly in demand 

 for shipbuilding and threatening, in his day, to become scarce. Grew 



Fig. 783. — Portrait of Nehemiah Grew. 



never reached a correct idea of cell structure and believed that the plant was 

 composed of a lace- work of inter^voven threads (hence the term " tissue "), 

 which were no doubt the profiles of the cell walls as seen in sections. He 

 was nevertheless superior to Malpighi in the extent and carefulness of his 

 observations. 



