GREW 173 



on the under-side of fern-leaves. Perhaps he had no 

 clearer proof to adduce than the springing-up of young 

 ferns around old ones, and the emission from the fronds 

 of fine particles, which would naturally be called seeds. 

 The learned botanists of ancient times had denied that 

 ferns bear seed, but popular belief in the middle ages 

 inclined the other way. 



The passages just quoted show Grew at his best. It 

 is natural that he should have mistaken many things. 

 Like Malpighi, he failed to recognise the cambium-layer 

 of the stem, which is very excusable. His propensity to 

 put forth untested speculations sometimes makes us 

 smile. Thus he explains that sap ascends because its 

 motion is ascent, and because motion is more noble ; he 

 distinguishes solar plants which twine with the sun 

 from lunar plants which twine with the moon. In these 

 things Grew was the man of his generation— a generation 

 which no one will affect to despise who recollects that it 

 was also the generation of Swammerdam, Boyle and 

 Newton. 



Grew's talent really lay in the use of those aids which, 

 he was sanguine enough to suppose, would render 

 the microscope almost superfluous, viz. a good eye, a 

 clear light and a keen knife (p. 107). His reputation 

 with posterity would stand higher if he could have 

 laid aside all his philosophy, and imitated his friend 

 Boyle in testing current interpretations by well-devised 

 experiments. 



In the Philosophical Transactions^ there is a good 

 account by Grew of the ridges and sweat-pores of the 

 human hand. He saw the sweat exude from the pores, 

 and gives good figures of the patterns formed by the 

 ridges, of a ridge with its pores, &c. Tyson ^ a few years 



»No. 159 (1684). ^Anatomy of a Pygmie, p. 12, 1699. 



