Page:History of botany (Sachs; Garnsey).djvu/251

 those of fennel, teasel and reed, he found a similar kind of structure with the difference only, that in the latter the pores (cells) are arranged lengthwise, in cork in transverse rows. He says that he has never seen any passages for communication between the cells, but that they must exist, because the nourishing juice passes from one to another; for he has seen how in fresh plants the cells are filled with sap, as are the long pores in the wood; but these he found empty of sap in the carbonised wood, and filled with air.

It is plain that it was not much that Hooke saw with his improved microscope; thin cross-sections of the stem of balsam or gourd, two plants that grew at that time in every garden, would have shown the naked eye as much or even more of vegetable structure. At the same time there is proof here of what was said above on the influence of the microscope on the use of the eye; the pleasure in the performance of the new instrument must first direct attention to things which can be seen without it, but were never seen.

About the time of the appearance of Hooke's 'Micrographia' Malpighi and Grew had already made the structure of the plant the subject of detailed and systematic investigations, the results of which they laid before the Royal Society in London almost at the same time in 1671. The question to which of the two the priority belongs has been repeatedly discussed, though the facts to be considered are undoubted. The first part of Malpighi's large work, the 'Anatomes plantarum idea,' which appeared at a later time, is dated Bologna, November 1, 1671; and Grew, who from 1677 was Secretary to the Royal Society, informs us in the preface to his anatomical work of 1682, that Malpighi laid his work before the Society on December 7, 1671, the same day on which Grew presented his treatise, 'The Anatomy of plantes begun,' in print, having already tendered it in manuscript on the eleventh of May in the same year. But it must be observed that these are not the dates of the larger works of the two men, but only of the