Page:History of botany (Sachs; Garnsey).djvu/311

 apertures in which he considers as of secondary importance. It is still more striking that Meyen expressly rejects on page 120 the fact established two years before by von Mohl that the pits of parenchyma are thinner spots, and treats the various pit-formations of the cell-wall as raised portions of the surface.

In the first volume of his later work the 'Neues System,' Meyen gives a detailed account of phytotomy, which accords on the whole with the scheme developed in the book we have been examining, and as might be expected he corrects many errors, adduces many new observations, and introduces us to many steps in advance of former knowledge ; we shall recur to some of his later views in ensuing portions of this history with which they are more in connection, remarking only here, that Meyen paid more attention to the contents of the cell than his contemporaries, and especially made a number of observations on the streaming movement, without however recognising the peculiar nature of the protoplasm which is its substratum. The cell-wall, which he had once considered to be homogeneous, he afterwards believed to be composed of fine fibres, a view resting on correct but insufficient observation and afterwards set right by von Mohl and Nageli.

It is scarcely possible to imagine a more striking contrast between two men pursuing the same science than that between Meyen and his much more important contemporary Hugo von Mohl; Meyen was more a writer than an investigator; von Mohl wrote comparatively little in a long time, and only after most careful investigation; Meyen attended more to the habit, the collective impression produced by objects seen with the microscope, von Mohl troubled himself little about this, and always went back to the foundation and true inner connection of the structural relations; Meyen quickly formed his judgment, von Mohl often delayed his even after long investigation; Meyen was not critical, though always prone to opposition, in von Mohl the critical power much overweighed that of constructive thought. Meyen has not so much contributed to the definitive