SECTION IV. 



Note I. Page 87. 



Malpighi was bom A. D. 1628. He was a native and physician of 

 Bologna, and professor of medicine in the university of that city. For 

 his discoveries in Anatomy he has been justly celebrated, in conjunction 

 with the well-known Borelli, and for having thrown light on the 

 diseases of the liver. He was the first writer who gave to the world a 

 system of the true Anatomy of Plants, of which one of the most 

 important doctrines is the theory of the circulation of the sap, its 

 ascent in the wood, and its descent in the bark. His work seems to 

 have appeared in 16/1. In 1669 he was admitted a Fellow of the 

 Royal Society of London ; and he kept up a regular correspondence 

 with several of its members till his death. 



Dr Nehemiah Grew, the father of English phytology, and one of 

 the most eminent physicians of his time, was a contemporary of 

 Malpighi's. He published about the same period his " Anatomy of 

 Plants," wherein he advanced, on similar principles, the doctrine of the 

 circulation of the sap. The second edition bears date, London, 1688 ; 

 so that, as they investigated and wrote in different countries, and with- 

 out communication with each other on this obscure subject, so they 

 justly divide the honour of realising the conjectures of the Greek 

 Naturalists. Notwithstanding the importance of later researches, their 

 works are held in high esteem down to the present period. 



Note II. Page 88. 



It was extremely natural for phytologists, after the discovery of the 

 circulation of the blood in animals, to extend the analogy to the vege- 

 table kingdom. They had in the latter no visible organs correspond- 

 ing to the stomach, the intestines, or the lacteals, and above all, to the 

 heart, the main-spring and centre of the circulation of the blood ; but 

 these wants were readily supplied. The root was supposed to corre- 

 spond to both the mouth and the stomach, and to effect such a change 



