126 
companied by a seven-page manuscript in the handwriting of 
Charles Darwin, refuting its extraordinary statements. ‘These 
notes were prepared by Darwin for Sir Joseph Hooker, and sug- 
gest points of attack against the bishop. This appears to be the 
actual copy of the article in Hooker’s hands during the now famous 
meeting of the British Association in Oxford, July, 1860. An- 
other item among the Darwiniana was a copy of the original issue 
of the Darwin-Wallace paper, “ On the tendency of species to form 
varieties,” published in the Journal of the Proceedings of the 
Linnean Society of London, V. 2, No. 9, 1858. 
In the first case on view were seven books, printed before the 
year 1500, opened at pages showing the clearness and beauty of 
the early typography and the very conventionalized studies of plants 
used as illustrations. The long tables showed advances in the 
technique employed in the making of botanical illustrations, from 
the earliest herbals and the beautiful and naturalistic wood-cuts of 
Brunfels and Iuchs, through the later methods of copper engrav- 
ing, lithography, “nature printing,” photography, and other mod- 
ern methods, 
Among the early scientific books was one by Nicolaus de Cusa., 
printed in Paris in 1514, in which the author describes one of the 
first biological experiments of modern times. [He weighed seeds 
and planted them in 100 pounds of soil. Afterwards, he weighed 
the soil and the plants that grew from the seed. Since the soil 
— 
lost little in weight he concluded that the plants acquired most of 
their weight from the water which had been given them. One 
hundred and thirty-seven years later, van Helmont described a 
similar experiment, “ pirated,” says Singer, from Cusanus. It 
was two hundred and thirteen years after de Cusa that Hales, in 
his “ Vegetable Staticks ” (1727), described his own quantitative 
experiments with plants. 
First editions of many rare old books on botany and medicine 
were shown, among which were choice copies of Dodonaeus, Iuchs, 
Gerarde, and Mattiolt. One of the earliest landmarks in the his- 
tory of microscopy, Robert [looke’s beautiful ‘ Micrographia 
,” 1665, was placed with van Leeuwenhoek’s volumes. of 
“ Arcana naturae,” 1695, and * Ontledingen . . . van de cinnabar 
naturalis,’” 1686. Van Leeuwenhoek constructed his own micro- 
