THE GERMANS EN ADVANCE. 85 



by Von Baer, Prevost and Dumas, Valentin, and others. 

 Had W. Hewson's observations on the " central particle 

 of the blood (1773), and E. Brown's on the nucleus 

 of the vegetable cell (1831), been fully extended, 

 England would have anticipated Germany in the 

 cell-discovery. Though Midlers recognition of the 

 cellular structure of the chorda dorsalis, and the re- 

 searches of Henle and Valentin on the epithelium and 

 animal textures, as well as those of Mirbel on plants, 

 had been published, and though eminent ernbryologists, 

 including those named above, and Batlike, Barry, 

 BischorT, and Allen Thomson, had the primitive organic 

 structures under observation, it was left to Schleiden 

 and Schwann to establish the first base-line of the new 

 histological survey. It soon came to be recognised 

 that, however diversified in character the tissues of 

 organized bodies might be to the eye, the microscope 

 revealed a remarkable uniformity of character in their 

 growth and construction ; and further, that all vege- 

 table structures, and many animal, originate in minute 

 corpuscles having more or less of a vesicular structure, 

 named '"cells." These cells, constituting the germs of 

 the tissues, are embryonic elements, and the history of 

 their growth and metamorphosis corresponds in a great 

 measure t<> the changes observed in tracing the germinal 

 vesicle in its progressive Btages of development into 

 tin- differenl textures of the animal organism. 



Tin- discovery of the ( rermans came a1 a g I i ime 



to refresh the physiological mind of Europe. Though 

 doing a fair amount of work in biology. England 



