Vegetable Productions. 79 



CHAPTER VIII. 



VEGETABLE PRODUCTIONS. 



REMARK in Hogg's "Treatise on the Mi- 

 croscope" shows the important part which 

 that instrument has performed, in adding to 

 our knowledge of the vegetable world : " Since the 

 introduction of the achromatic microscope," he says, 

 " we have obtained nearly the whole of the valuable 

 information which we now possess relative to the 

 minute structure of vegetables." The discoveries 

 which have been made in this branch of study are 

 detailed in a most instructive manner in that work, 

 and in Dr. Carpenter's, and would probably give 

 some help even to an advanced student of vegetable 

 physiology ; while, to those who know nothing of 

 plants beyond their external beauty, they impart a 

 half-depressing glimpse of the world of truth un- 

 known to them, and yet discovered by the diligence 

 of others. Yet an attentive study of their observa- 

 tions on a few familiar microscopic vegetable objects 

 gives much additional interest to a subsequent exami- 

 nation of them. 



As mere objects of display, few things give more 



