Philosophy of Botany. 229 



Again, at the beginnings of the nineteenth century, a new 

 impulse takes hold in this direction, and the microscope was 

 now applied with more painstaking and circumspection. The 

 instrument, too, had been, about 1830, greatly improved and 

 made available for the solution of problems of structure and 

 growth. 



The origin of the germ or embryo was the first object of in- 

 quiry which found its solution in the discovery that every 

 plant, be it palm or oak, or a humble grass, is originally a 

 simple microscopical cell, which comes into existence in the 

 interior of the germ, through the agency of a generative act. 

 That was a highly important discovery, for the origin of a new 

 living being must be considered a new creation. Now it was 

 apparent that the secret of that creation consists in the forma- 

 tion of a cell. After this followed the second problem : How 

 develops out of this first cell the complicated plant, with the 

 manifold organs, each again composed of innumerable cells? 

 The microscope again served to illustrate the process : the 

 contact of the fertilizing pollen causes this cell to form a par- 

 tition through its middle, dividing it into two chambers. 

 Each chamber represents an independent cell, and each of 

 these soon subdivides itself again, and by this same process, 

 continually repeated, comes about the many-chambered and 

 many-celled structures, which we call the plant. 



Analogous to the rearing of a house in accordance with the 

 design which prescribes the position of the stones and walls, 

 follows the process of cell after cell in obedience to an innate 

 plan which differs in every species, and descends by inher- 

 itance from generation to generation. 



The larger flowering plants were naturally the first objects 

 submitted to these investigations, but it was soon found out 

 that the less conspicuous and simpler plants, commonly com- 

 prised under the name " Cryptogames " — i. e., mosses, sea- 

 weeds, lichens, and fungi — afford a far richer field to the ob- 

 server. The simpler the plant, the more incomplete its organs ; 

 the less is also the number of cells composing it, and the better 

 the chance to survey the structure and development. Many 

 surprising processes accompany the growth of the lowest. 

 Here only we meet with those curious germ cells, which, like 



