218 PHYSIOLOGICAL BOTANY. 



me, if he thought differently from me. He did not inte- 

 rest himself in theories, not even in mine. I have pre- 

 sented some figures selected from a large number, which 

 appear to me very accurately and carefully drawn, and 

 shall continue to do so if the undertaking should receive 

 support/' I therefore by no means leave the observation 

 to the draughtsman, but only the delineation ; I correct 

 him, but do not at once desire compliance, as with a 

 young and dim-sighted artist, but contradiction. I con- 

 fess that I had in my mind the Plates upon the Circulating 

 System of Plants, and especially Meyen's illustration of 

 the network of the so-called vital vessels in the leaves of 

 Alisma plantago. The brief preface to the second half of 

 the Anatomico-botanical Plates concludes with the follow- 

 ing words : " But we learn to see, both with the eyes 

 given to us by nature, and with those formed by art." 

 From that time to the present (January 1846), M. Schmidt 

 works with me five days every week in the morning, 

 except during my autumnal tour, and does not draw any- 

 thing which I have not carefully observed, and my eyes, 

 thank God ! are as good as ever. I educated my draughts- 

 man for microscopic delineation, and at the end of seven 

 years he was so far advanced, that I could reason with 

 him ; now after sixteen years he is still more so. How 

 can any one be thought so foolish as to have drawings 

 made under his own superintendence without pointing 

 out their object. I beg M. Schleiden not to consider 

 every one a fool but himself. 



I must, however, apologize to the reader for having be- 

 come prolix on matters relating to myself. But some- 

 thing more upon a purely scientific subject. "That 

 property of the cell has already been mentioned," says 

 the author, in the chapter upon " The Life of .the Cell," 

 p. 273, "in virtue of which it transmits fluids. It is 

 a perfectly superfluous and clumsy hypothesis, in the 

 explanation of this point, to have recourse to the exist- 

 ence of minute invisible pores ; the membrane and 

 liquid here stand in the same relation to each other, as 



