CH. xvii. VEGETABLE ANATOMY. 137 



an ordinary grain of sand might contain ten thousand of 

 these living creatures. When such tiny beings as these 

 could be seen and examined, I think you will acknowledge 

 that I did not speak too strongly when I said that the 

 microscope has opened out to us a new and marvellous 

 world of life. 



Vegetable Anatomy, Grew and Malpighi, 167O. 

 From insects Malpighi next turned to plants ; and it is 

 curious that at about the same time an English botanist 

 named Nehemiah Grew (born 1628, died 1711), who was 

 secretary to the Royal Society, also took up the same study ; 

 and the papers of the two men were laid before the Royal 

 Society on the same day in 1670. Malpighi's complete 

 work was afterwards published in 1674, and Grew's in 1682. 



The investigations of these two men agreed in many 

 remarkable points ; they had both of them examined with 

 great care the flesh (if we may call it so) of plants, and 

 they described for the first time the tiny bags or cells of 

 which every part of a plant is made, and which you may 

 easily see for yeurself if you put a very thin piece of the 

 pulpy part of an apple, or better still, of 

 the pith of elder under the microscope 

 (see Fig. 23). They had also noticed 

 the long tubes which lie among the 

 woody fibres in the stringy or fibrous 

 part of a plant and in the veins of the 

 leaves, and Grew had pointed out quite 

 truly that these tubes, which are called cellular tissue from the 

 vessels or ducts, are composed of P khof 

 strings or cells which have grown together into one long 

 cell or tube. 



Grew also first saw those beautiful little mouths in the 

 skin of the leaves called stomatcs, which open when the air 





