31 



B O T A N V. 



l34 ' 



History. p e3r to have been not the least, he removed, in 1672, 

 /"* to London, where he had the honour of being suc- 

 cessively elected a fellow of the Royal Society, se- 

 cretary to the Society, and fellow of the Royal Col- 

 lege of Physicians, and continued to reside there till 

 the time of his death in 1711 ; and the year before 

 he left Coventry, he published the first part of his 

 experiments on vegetables, after having submitted it 

 to the Royal Society, under the title of The Anatomy 

 of Vegetables, begun with a general account of vege- 

 tation founded thereon. In 1673, he published a 

 second part, entitled, An idea of a Phyiological His- 

 tory propounded, together -cith a continuation of the 

 Anatomy of Vegetable!, particularly prosecuted on 

 Hoots. In 1675, he added the Anatomy of Trunks; 

 and seven years *iterwards he republished the whole, 

 together with the anatomy of the leaves, flowers, 

 fruits, and seeds, under the title of The Anatomy of 

 Plants, with an idea of a Philosophical History of 

 Plants. 



Maloiglii. Malpighi on the other hand, no less celebrated 

 iioi-n iG-28. f or hj,. discoveries in the anatomy of the body, than 

 in the structure and physiology of plants, was born in 

 the neighbourhood of Bologna in Italy, in 1628. 

 Having discovered great powers of mind, and mjde 

 an unusual proficiency in his private studies, he was 

 earJy singled out by his merit from among his con- 

 temporaries, and made professor of anatomy and me- 

 dicine at Bologna. He afterwards went for some 

 time to Messina in Sicily, in consequence of repeated 

 solicitations, and various inducements being held out 

 to him. But feeling himself less comfortably situ- 

 ated than he had expected, he returned again to Bo- 

 logna in 1666, and continued there till 1691, when 

 he became physician to Pope Innocent XII., and re- 

 moved to Rome, where he died from a stroke of apo- 

 plexy in 1694-. His inquiries into the structure and 

 jxhysiology of plants which had been communicated 

 to the Royal Society of London, of which he was a 

 fellow, were published at their expencean 1675 and 

 1679, under the title of Anatomia Piantarum ; and 

 though professedly written on the same subject with 

 the anatomy of Grew, will be found, like every other 

 work of originality and merit, to place it often in 

 a considerably various point of view. 



These two gentlemen, whose physiological works 

 were justly received by their contemporaries asamost 

 valuable addition to natural history, have been 

 ever since appealed and resorted to as a copious store- 

 house of, facts and observations, were followed at a 

 distance in the same course of inquiry by Dr Steohen 

 Hales, and Henry Louis Duhamel du Monceau. 

 Hales. The former, a clergyman of the church of England, 



isom 1 677, ivho was born at Becksbourn in the county of Kent, 

 ""' 17( ?l- ja 1677, and died at Teddington in Middlesex, where 

 hj vvis rector in 1761, at the advanced age of 84, per- 

 formed a moot important and desirable service by the 

 publication of his Vegetable Stalicks. The experi- 

 ments detailed' in that work, and originally commu- 

 nicated in papers which were read before the Royal 

 Society, are of the most satisfactory nature, if we 

 look either to the ingenuity with which they were 

 contrived, or the skill with which they were conduct- 

 ed : and no person who has taken a connected view 

 of them will deny, that they have had the effect of 



throwing a new and interesting light on many things History, 

 connected with the physiology of plants. > v"~-~ 



The merit of the author, whom Haller beautifully 

 characterises, by styling him " pious, modest, inde- 

 fatigable, and born for the discovery of truth," pro- 

 cured him not only a place in the Royal Society of 

 London, but the, honour of being elected, on the death 

 of Sir H. Slor.ne, one of the very few foreign mem- 

 bers of the Academy ot Sciences at Paris. Nor c -;i 

 we hesitate to add, in the words of a very excellent 

 judge, that his work " not only evinces a superior 

 rrrind, but is a perfect modtl ot experimental inveoti- 

 gation." 



Duhamel, who was born at Paris in 1700, and Ouliamel. 

 died within these thirty years, after having long a ril 17 

 held the office of superintendant of marine, and risen 

 in point of literary honour to be dean of the Acade- 

 my of Sciences, directed his attention, with hardly 

 less ingenuity, and upon a still more extensive scale 

 than his contemporaries, to the elucidation of the 

 same subject. He began to publish something rela- 

 ting to it in the year 1728, and continued to do so 

 occasionally till within a short time of his death : niul 

 during the whole of that period, he used such dili- 

 gence, that we may safely say, on a review of his 

 works, that he left scarcely any part of vegetable or- 

 ganization or economy unattempted in his experi- 

 ments, or unnoticed in his writings. Of his various 

 publications, which it would require some time 

 even to enumerate, it would be impossible to give any 

 adequate idea in this place ; and we shall therefore 

 merely observe, that while the result of the whole 

 forms a large and valuable accession to our know- 

 ledge, the Physique des Arbres, which appeared in 

 1758, and may be reckoned the principal work of 

 that indefatigable and highly meritorious naturalist, 

 is, in a particular manner, replete with the most in- 

 teresting information, and will ever remain a book of 

 first rate authority on the subject of which it treats. 



Contemporary with Duhamel was Charles Bonnet, Bonnt. 

 an amiable and ingenious philosopher of Geneva, 

 who, besides doing much service to natural history, 

 in some other respects began a series of well-devised 

 and luminous experiments, with a view to ascertain 

 the structure and physiology of leaves, in 1 7-1-7, and 

 published an account of them seven years after in a 

 work entitled, liccherches sur I'usnge des Feuilles 

 dans Ics Plantes. 



More recently, Joseph Gaertner, a most deserving Gaertner. 

 German, who died at Kalve, near Stutgard, where he Died 1791 

 was physician in 1791, has favoured us with an ex- 

 cellent work, containing the result of much patient, 

 accurate, and useful investigation on a subject hither- 

 to almost neglected, the nature and physiology of 

 seed. And, within these few years, our countryman 

 Darwin, alike eminent as a poet and philosopher, lias 

 thrown out many ingenious and valuable hints in his 

 Phyiologia, Sennebier, a Jearned and ingenious cler- 

 gyman of Geneva, has communicated the result of 

 much reading and inquiry, in a work entitled, Physio- 

 logie Vege.lale; and Desfontaines, a French botanist 

 and professor, has written with much ability on the 

 nature of the palm tribe. 



The authors, however, who have done most for 

 table physiology in our times, are C. F. Bris- 



