528 
MORPHOLOGY. 
BOOK VI. 
counting for the modifications of the pistil ; and, secondly, in 
the fanciful supposition that the organs of fructification are 
prepared six years beforehand, and that their peculiar appear- 
ance is owing to the time of this developement being 
anticipated by some unknown but ever-acting cause. It was 
this which, in all probability, caused the whole theory to be 
generally neglected. It was however maintained by Ludwig 
and Wolff; the latter of whom, in particular, improved so 
much upon the speculation of Linnaeus, by rejecting what was 
fanciful, and supplying, to a certain extent, an explanation of 
the origin of the pistil, that his paper in the Novi Commentarii 
Academics Petropolitance for 1768 would undoubtedly have 
deserved to be considered the commencement of the last aera 
in botanical philosophy, if it had been known to botanists. 
But it was introduced into a paper upon the formation of the 
intestines of animals, and does not appear ever to have at- 
tracted any attention, until it was discovered by Miquel 
about two years ago. 
It is, therefore, in reality to the celebrated poet Gothe that 
the honour justly belongs of having brought before the world, 
in a solid and philosophical form, the doctrine of all the parts 
of a plant being in reality reducible to the axis and its 
appendages, and consequently of having proved, to use his own 
words, that vegetables " develope themselves out of themselves 
progressively." By this means he led to the discovery of the 
real laws of structure in the various organs that are com- 
pounded of modified leaves, and thence to a determination of 
the analogies that exist between one thing and another in 
different tribes of plants ; thus laying the foundation of Vege- 
table Comparative Anatomy. 
Gothe's Versuch die Metamorphose der Pflanzen zu erkldren 
appeared in 1790 ; it was long before it attracted attention ; 
but as soon as it was brought into notice by the speculations of 
Brown, De Candolle, Du Petit Thenars, and others, it pro- 
duced a revolution in the views of botanists which has had no 
parallel since the microscopical discoveries of Grew and the 
vegetable anatomists of his day. 
In the following remarks I shall endeavour to condense 
