CHAPTER I. 



PHYTOTOMY FOUNDED BY MALPIGHI AND GREW. 

 1671-1682. 



THE foundation of vegetable anatomy, indeed of all insight 

 into the structure of the substance of plants, is the knowledge 

 of their cellular structure. We find the first perception of this 

 truth in a comprehensive work of ROBERT HooKE 1 , which 

 appeared in London in 1667 under the title of ' Micrographia 

 or some physiological descriptions of minute bodies made by 

 magnifying glasses.' The author of this remarkable book was 

 not a botanist, but an investigator of nature of the kind more 

 especially to be found in the seventeenth century ; he was 

 mathematician, chemist, physicist, a great mechanician, and 

 later an architect, and moreover a philosopher of the new 

 school then rising. Beside many discoveries in various sub- 

 jects he succeeded in 1660 in so far improving the compound 

 microscope, that with considerable increase in magnifying power 

 it had tolerably clear definition. With this instrument Henshaw 

 in 1 66 1 is stated to have discovered the vessels in walnut- 

 wood, a fact not of importance for our history. Hooke himself 

 was anxious to show the world how much could be seen with his 



1 Robert Hooke, born in 1635 at Freshwater in the Isle of Wight, was a 

 man of marvellous industry and varied acquirement in spite of a delicate 

 constitution. lie became a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1662, and was 

 afterwards its Secretary and Professor of Geometry in Gresham College. 

 He died in 1703. There is a good account of him by de 1'Aulnaye in the 

 ' Biographic Universelle.' 



