1889.] BOTANICAL GAZETTE. 



237 



in work almost identical with that of Malpighi, but there is 

 no good reason to believe, as was formerly intimated, that he 

 was indebted to Malpighi for any of the statements which he 

 published as his own. It is, however, best for us to consider 

 these two works together. By Grew the term " cell " ap- 

 pears to have been applied to the cavities in what we ma\ 

 term the softer tissues of the plant. It is certain that neitheY 

 Malpighi nor Grew recognized, as we can now, the multifarious 

 forms of vessels, fibres, long cells and the like, as referable to a 

 common source. There is always a strong temptation to read 

 in an old text some meaning which squares with our own no- 

 tions, and one is greatly tempted to think that these assiduous 

 investigators, Grew and Malpighi, detected the relationships 

 which we know exist between the different elements of vege- 

 table structure. But after giving them the benefit of even 

 doubt, one fails to find in their writings any recognition of 

 such affinities. On the contrary, these investigators were 

 engaged in a study which naturally led them away from such 

 conceptions. They were busy with descriptive work, out- 

 lining the arrangement of tissues in all organs of the plant 

 which their knives could reach. They did not even break 

 up the tissues into elementary parts, but they described and 

 delineated with great skill the tissues as the}- were displayed 

 in sections. Is it not incredible that these first works on veg- 

 etable structure, prepared only a few years after the earliest 

 application of the compound microscope to the study of plants, 

 should have remained for almost one hundred and fifty years 

 the only comprehensive treatises on the subject? But the 

 most charitable inquirer fails to find, during that long period. 

 :| ny other works of importance on vegetable anatomy. 



Near the close of the last century, at a period character- 

 ized by activity in many departments of speculative inquiries, 

 the subject of vegetable structure again excited considerable 

 attention, but little substantial advance was made. In 1804 

 the Royal Society of Sciences at Gottingen proposed for 

 competition certain questions relative to the structure and the 

 mode of growth of tissues. The chief contestants for this 

 prize were Link, Rudolphi and Treviranus. The memoirs 

 of the first two received the prize, that of the latter honorable 

 mention. The names of others should be referred to as hav- 

 ing worked at or about this time in the same field, namely : 

 •'•ernhardi, Mirbel, and Moldenhawer, the latter making a 

 great advance in certain directions. But to all of these whom 

 I have mentioned, including the winners of the prize, the im- 

 portant questions seem to be. how are the structural elements 



