chap, v.] the Influence of the History of Development. 191 



thus set aside, much to the profit of the immediate future, 

 which directed its attention specially to the Cryptogams. 



Schleiden however did not succeed in securing firm ground 

 for the morphology of the Cryptogams as founded on the history 

 of their development. His investigations into the morphology 

 of the Phanerogams were more successful. His theory of the 

 flower and fruit is an admirable performance for the time, even 

 though we abandon his view of the stalk nature of placentas 

 and some other notions, as we obviously must. As Robert 

 Brown founded the history of the development of the ovule, so 

 Schleiden founded that of the flower, and his example influ- 

 enced other botanists. Soon investigations into the genesis 

 of the flower was one of the chief occupations of morpho- 

 logists, and the results of enquiry into development proved to 

 be of great value for the systematic arrangement of the Pha- 

 nerogams, especially when more exact attention was paid to 

 the sequence of development in the organs of an inflorescence, 

 to abortion, doubling and branching of the stamens, and to the 

 like matters. Duchartre, Wigand, Gelesnoff and many others, 

 were soon working in the same direction with great success. 

 Payer deserves special mention for his enormous perseverance 

 in examining the development of the flower in all the more 

 important families in his ' Organogenie de la fleur,' 1857, and 

 thijs producing a standard work, distinguished alike for the 

 certainty of the observations, the simple unbiassed interpreta- 

 tion of the things observed, and the beauty and abundance of 

 the figures — a work which became more important every year 

 for the morphology of the flower. 



Schleiden's text-book was the first of its kind that supplied 

 the student with really good figures based on careful ob- 

 servations. With all its many and obvious defects it had one 

 merit which cannot be rated too highly ; its appearance at 

 once put botany on the footing of a natural science in the 

 modern sense of the word, and placed it upon a higher plat- 

 form, extending its horizon by raising its point of view. 



