234 PJiytotomy founded [Book ii. 



If the views of Malpighi and Grew agreed in the main on the 

 points here mentioned, yet the style and manner of the two 

 were very different. Malpighi kept more closely to that which 

 could be directly seen ; Grew delighted in tacking on a variety 

 of theoretical discussions to his observations, and especially 

 endeavoured to follow the path of speculation beyond the 

 limits of what was visible with the microscope. Malpighi's 

 account reads like a masterly sketch, Grew's like an elaborate 

 production of great and almost pedantic carefulness ; Malpighi 

 displays a greater formal cultivation, and deals with the ques- 

 tions with light touches, allusively, and almost in the tone of 

 conversation. Grew on the other hand is at pains to reduce 

 the new science to a learned and well-studied system, and to 

 bring it into connection with chemistry, physics, and above all 

 with the Cartesian philosophy. Malpighi was one of the most 

 famous physicians and zootomists of his time, and treated 

 phytotomy from the points of view already opened in zootomy ; 

 Grew too occupied himself occasionally with zootomy, but he 

 was a vegetable anatomist by profession, and gave himself up, 

 especially after 1688, almost exclusively to the study of the 

 structure of plants with a devotion hardly to be paralleled till 

 we come down to Mirbel and von Mohl. 



As in medicine in the 17th century human anatomy was 

 intimately connected with physiology, and the latter was not 

 yet treated as a distinct study, so the founders of phytotomy 

 naturally combined the physiological consideration of the 

 functions of organs with the examination of their structure. 

 Considerations on the movement of sap and on food appear in 

 the front of every anatomical enquiry ; relations of structure, 

 which the microscope could not reach, were assumed hypo- 

 thetically on physiological grounds, although little positive 

 was known at the time about the functions of the organs of 

 plants ; hence recourse was had to analogies between vegetable 

 and animal life, and it is true that vegetable physiology received 

 its first great impulse by this means, but occasion was given at 



