THE DIVIDING YEAK, 1841 419 



the family house in the Place St. Pierre, ax Geneva. We 

 visit it with interest and pious respect. But it is evident 

 that the active science of the present day has drifted elsewhere. 

 The dynasty of De Candolle, brilliant and effective as it was, 

 has left behind no co-ordinating machine like that of the 

 establishment at Kew. 



The year 1841 was notable in the History of Botany. 

 It witnessed the death of A. P. De Candolle, and the move of 

 Sir William Hooker to Kew. It may be held as the year of 

 birth of the new establishment there. We may then pause 

 and consider the position of Botanical Science in Europe at 

 this date. The glamour of the Linnaean period had faded, 

 and the Natural System of Classification of Plants initiated 

 by De Jussieu had fully established its position, taking its 

 most elaborate form in the ' Prodromus ' of A. P. De Candolle, 

 the continuation of the unfinished work being left in the 

 hands of his son Alphonse. In England, Bobert Brown was 

 in the full plenitude of his powers, and, in possession of the 

 Banksian Herbarium, was evolving out of its rich materials 

 new principles of classification, and fresh morphological 

 comparisons. In fact Morphology was at this time being 

 differentiated from mere Systematic as a separate discipline. 

 Nothing contributed more effectively to this than the publica- 

 tion of ' Die Botanik als inductive Wissenschaft,' by Schleiden, 

 the first edition of which appeared in 1842 ; for in it develop- 

 ment and embryology were indicated as the foundation of 

 all insight into Morphology. But notwithstanding the great 

 advances of this period in tracing natural affinities, and in the 

 pursuit of morphological comparison, branches which would 

 seem to provide the true basis for some theory of descent, the 

 Dogma of Constancy of Species still reigned. It was to continue 

 yet for twenty years to dominate botanical thought. 



Meanwhile great advances had been made also in the 

 knowledge of the mature framework of cell-membranes in 

 plants. Anatomy, initiated in Great Britain by Hooke, Grew, 

 and Malpighi, had developed in the hands of many ' phyto- 

 tomists,' the series culminating in the work of Von Mohl. 

 But it was chiefly the mere skeleton which was the subject 





