SOME EARLY MICROSCOPISTS 



ture. Various romantic stories have been told con- 

 cerning certain imaginary events which led Malpighi 

 to take up the study of plant structure, but the 

 scientist himself refuted these picturesque stories. 

 Suffice it to say that his book on the subject, 

 Anatome Plantariinif though imperfect in many 

 respects and, as might be conjectured in so early a 

 work, often inaccurate, contains a large number of 

 astonishingly good drawings; many of the original 

 drawings, by the way, executed in red chalk, are 

 in the possession of the Royal Society. 



It is interesting to note that this botanist com- 

 pared the falling of leaves to the shedding of an 

 insect's skin, in this respect at any rate he had 

 advanced no further than Aristotle, who compared 

 leaf-fall to the moulting of a bird. On the other 

 hand, the Italian was the first scientist to describe 

 the pores (stomata) of leaves, though he never dis- 

 covered that they occurred on all leaves. He, first 

 of all men, showed that nectar was formed by the 

 flower and not transferred thence from other sources 

 as had previously been believed; he too explained 

 accurately for the first time the process of germina- 

 tion in the seed. It was not alone as a botanist, 

 however, that Malpighi was celebrated. He eluci- 

 dated the various changes which take place during 

 the hatching of an egg ; he was the first man to give 

 an accurate account of the structure of an insect, 

 and this he did in his work on the Anatomy of the 

 Silkworm. Using a simple microscope for his in- 

 vestigations, he contracted an eye affliction during 



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