Page:History of botany (Sachs; Garnsey).djvu/272

 only lies between each of two adjoining cells, a point which succeeding phytotomists were a long time in determining. As cells are formed by the secretion of drops of sap in the fundamental substance which is at first homogeneous, so vessels, according to Wolff, are produced by longitudinal extension of a drop in the mucilage and formation of a canal; consequently adjoining vessels must be separated from one another by a single lamina of the fundamental substance. Though Wolff expressly mentions the movement of the sap within the firm mucilaginous substance between the cellular cavities and the vascular canals, a movement of diffusion as it might now be termed, he inconsistently enough thinks it necessary to assume the existence of perforations in the bounding-walls of cells and vessels to serve for the movement of sap from cell to cell and vessel to vessel; yet in the single case in which he succeeded in obtaining isolated cells, namely in ripe fruits, he was obliged to allow that the walls were closed.

The growth of the parts of plants, according to Wolff, is effected by expansion of existing cells and vessels, and by the formation of new ones between them in the same way as the first vacuoles were formed in the mucilaginous substance of very young organs; that is to say, the sap which saturates the solid substance between the passages and cavities of the tissue separates in the form of drops, which increase in size and then appear as cells and vessels introduced between the older ones. The substance between the passages and cavities, at first soft and extensible, becomes firmer and harder with increasing age, and at the same time a hardening substance may be deposited on it from the sap which is stagnant in the cell-cavities and in movement in the vascular passages, and this substance in many cases appears as their proper membrane.

This is in all essential points Wolff's theory. We may omit his statements on the subject of the first formation of leaves at the growing point and of the development of the parts of the flower, as well as his physiological views on food and sexuality,