BOOK in.] Introduction. 367 



i. That the first beginnings of vegetable physiology were 

 made about the time that chemistry and physics began to take 

 their place among the true natural sciences, is no proof that 

 they called vegetable physiology into existence. She, like 

 general physiology, mineralogy, astronomy, geography, owed 

 her origin to the outburst of the spirit of enquiry in the i6th 

 and i yth centuries, which feeling the emptiness of the scholastic 

 philosophy set itself to gather valuable knowledge by observa- 

 tion in every direction. It was in the second half of the i yth 

 century that societies or academies for the study of the natural 

 sciences were founded in Italy, England, Germany, and France 

 under the influence of this feeling ; the first works on vegetable 

 physiology play a very prominent part in their transactions ; not 

 to speak of less important cases, it was the Royal Society of 

 London which published between 1660 and 1690 the memorable 

 works of Malpighi and Grew ; the first communications of 

 Camerarius, which form an epoch in the history of the doctrine 

 of sexuality, appeared in the journals of the German Academia 

 Naturae Curiosorum, and the French Academy undertook about 

 the same time to organise methodical researches in vegetable 

 physiology under Dodart's direction, though the results it is 

 true did not answer to the goodness of the intention. This 

 period of movement in all branches of science, when the greatest 

 discoveries followed one another with marvellous rapidity, 

 witnessed also the first important advances in vegetable physi- 

 ology ; such were the first investigations into the ascending and 

 descending sap, especially those made in England, Malpighi's 

 theory which assigned to leaves the functions of organs of 

 nutriment, Ray's first communications on the influence of light 

 on the colours of plants, and above all the experiments of 

 Camerarius, which proved the fertilising power of the pollen. 

 It was the period of first discoveries ; the attempts at explana- 

 tion were certainly weak ; but phytotomy which was just com- 

 mencing its own work lent aid from the first to physiology, 

 while physics and chemistry could do but little for her. On 



