Page:History of botany (Sachs; Garnsey).djvu/268

 but without a mirror, an instrument which must have served therefore for observing with the light from above on an opaque surface; the objective was a simple lens. But to magnify objects more strongly, he says that he used a simple instead of this compound instrument, as was more the custom at the time. Like a true amateur Wolff submitted all sorts of small and delicate objects to his glass, without examining any of them thoroughly and persistently. His phytotomic gains were small; he observed for instance that starch-flour (powder) consists of grains, but believed from the way in which they refracted light that they were small vesicles filled with a fluid; yet he satisfied himself that these grains are already in the grains of rye and therefore not produced in the grinding. He laid thin sections of portions of plants on glass which was too imperfectly polished to allow of his seeing anything distinctly. His pupil Thümmig in his 'Meletemata' (1736) addressed himself to the subject with still less skill. By the case of these two men we may see plainly that want of success was due much less to the imperfectness of the microscope than to unskilful management and unsuitable preparation. But Wolff and Thümmig at least endeavoured to see something for themselves of the structure of plants; a famous botanist of the time, Ludwig, plainly never made a similar attempt, for in his 'Institutiones regni vegetabilis' (1742) he speaks of the inner structure of the plant in the following manner; 'Laminae or membranous pellicles, so connected together that they form little cavities or small cells and often reticulated by the intervention of fine threads, form the cell-tissue which we see pervading all parts of plants. These are what Malpighi and others call tubes, since they appear in different parts in the form of rows of connected vesicles! 'Boehmer's 'Dissertatio de cellulose contextu' (1785) is still worse; 'White elastic thicker or thinner fibres and threads woven together of differing shape and size form cavities or cells or caverns, and are usually known by the name of cell-tissue.' We see