Page:History of botany (Sachs; Garnsey).djvu/240

 stem, while the soft, pulpy, succulent condition of the unripe seeds and seed-vessels seemed to point to their identity with the pith. That not only are juices contained in plants, but that they must move in them, could not escape the simplest reflection; and further, the bleeding of the vine, the flow of gum from resiniferous trees, the gushing of a milky juice from the wounds of certain plants, exhibited so striking a resemblance to the bleeding of a wound in the body of an animal, that the idea of canals inside the plant, which, like the veins in animals, contain those juices and set them in motion, appeared quite natural, as we see plainly from Cesalpino's reflections on these structural conditions. If we add that it was known that the seeds are enclosed in the fruits, and that the embryo, together with a pulpy mass (cotyledons and endosperm), are in their turn enclosed in the seed, we have pretty well the whole inventory of phytotomic knowledge up to about the middle of the seventeenth century.

With careful preparation and skilful dissection of suitable parts of plants, and attentive consideration of the changes produced by decay and corruption, anatomical knowledge might have been considerably enlarged at an earlier time; but seeing is an art that must be learnt and cultivated; a definite aim and end must stimulate the observer into willingness to see exactly, and to distinguish and connect together correctly what he sees. But this art of seeing was not far advanced in the middle of the 17th century. All that was achieved in this direction did not go beyond the distinguishing the outer organs of leaf-forms and stem-forms, and we have seen in the first book how unsuccessful was the attempt to distinguish the minuter parts of the flower and fruit.

The invention of the microscope made small things seem large, and revealed to sight what was too small to be seen without it; but the use of magnifying glasses brought an advantage with it of a different kind—it taught those who used them to see scientifically and exactly. In arming the eye with