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THE VEGETABLE CELL. 
By ALFRED W. BENNETT, M.A., B.Sc., F.L.S., 
LECTURER ON BOTANY, ST. THOMAS’S HOSPITAL. 
r few departments has science-teaching undergone so great 
a change in recent years as in the mode in which the 
botanical student is instructed in the rudiments of his science. 
It is not many years since botany was thought to consist in 
a knowledge of the names of plants, and a facility in distin- 
guishing and naming closely-allied species differing from one 
another in the most minute characters. The real history of the 
structure of the plant, the mode in which its various tissues are 
formed, the function which each part is destined to fulfil, were 
not thought to form any part of the programme. Teachers of 
botany now recognise that their science has a much wider scope 
and a far nobler aim. He may be a profound botanist who has 
no knowledge of u critical” species, who would hesitate in assign- 
ing the most recent Latin name to half the flowers he might 
gather in wood or by wayside. To make himself acquainted, as 
far as Nature will reveal her secrets, with the internal economy 
of the subjects of his study, is the main object of his observa- 
tions and of his labours. And for this purpose the microscope 
must be freely used. Indeed, it is only since our opticians 
have produced instruments of such power and comparative 
perfection that we have been able to gain much insight into 
the internal structure of plants. 
At the foundation of all vegetable anatomy lies a knowledge 
of the structure of the Vegetable Cell. Though a few earlier 
writers obtained some insight into the part played by it in the 
structure of plants, Schleiden was the first, in his u Principles 
of Scientific Botany,” * to present the theory of the cell in a con- 
nected and complete form ; Schleiden’s account being confirmed, 
carried into more minute details, and in some points corrected, 
* Translated by Edwin Lankester, M.D., and now published by R. 
Hardwicke, 192 Piccadilly. 
