Summary 255 



lull, men of world-wide importance were constantly emerging 

 from the high level of their contemporaries. Hales, no doubt, 

 laid the foundation of scientific plant physiology, even Sachs 

 has said that his " Vegetable Staticks " " was the first com- 

 prehensive work the world had seen which was devoted to 

 the nutrition of plants and the movement of their sap . . . 

 Hales had the art of making plants reveal themselves. By 

 experiments planned and cunningly carried out he forced 

 them to betray the energies hidden in their apparently 

 inactive bodies." Grew was one of the earliest and greatest 

 investigators of plant anatomy, and, as we have said above 

 may be regarded as joint founder with Malpighi of the science 

 of vegetable anatomy. Robert Brown was regarded by his 

 contemporaries as the first botanist of his age, and he it was 

 who for the first time took into account the development 

 of plants as well as the structure of the mature and adult 

 forms. He and John Lindley did much to establish a 

 natural system based on the widest investigation possible 

 in their times. Sir Joseph Hooker may almost be said to 

 be the inventor of phyto-geography. Professor Bower writes 

 of him : " and so we have followed . . . this great man 

 into the various lines of scientific activity which he pursued. 

 We have seen him excel in them all. The cumulative result 

 is that he is universally held to have been, during several 

 decades, the most distinguished botanist of this time. He 

 was before all things a philosopher. In him we see the 

 foremost student of the broader aspects of plant-life at the 

 time when evolutionary belief was nascent." 



In the Stewarts' time, as we have seen, British science 

 led the world, and ever since our men of science have held 

 their own in comparison with the men of science of the 

 nations which can boast of an old civilization and far 

 surpassed, both in amount and in originality, that of nations 

 whose civilization only dates back to a few hundred years. 



