MALPIGHI 165 



with. For another century no one seems to have sus- 

 pected that experimental inquiries into such elementary 

 and vitally important processes as the nutrition of green 

 plants, the transport and storage of food-materials, and 

 the fertilisation of the ovule, had still almost to be 

 begun. 



If it be true, as I think it is, that Malpighi's work in 

 natural history produced no effect answerable to its real 

 value, it would be instructive to discover the reason. 

 Influence is gained most easily by those reformers who 

 neither move fast nor attempt many things at once. 

 Harvey, Swammerdam, Linnseus, and Cuvier, unlike one 

 another in so many things, each pursued one purpose 

 until it was accomplished. Harvey effected the dis- 

 covery of the circulation, Swammerdam explained the 

 transformations of insects, Linnaeus adapted the "system 

 of nature" to new and urgent wants, Cuvier revealed 

 the structure of many extinct animals, unlike any that 

 now survive. What else these great men did, and 

 whether they did anything else, were matters of less 

 importance. Moreover their discoveries were timely ; 

 the world was ready to receive them and to turn them 

 to account. Malpighi, on the other hand, opened out 

 many new paths, but soon quitted them. He explored 

 the anatomy of the flowering plant, the development of 

 the seedling, the development of the chick, the anatomy 

 of the silkworm, the structure of glands and many other 

 parts of the animal frame, but this extraordinary fertility 

 really diminished his influence. Few workers received 

 from him such practical training as enabled them to 

 occupy the territories which he had discovered, and he 

 became not so much a leader as a pioneer, who planted 

 his standards so far ahead and so far apart that they 

 could not serve as rallying-points, but merely as proofs 



