Page:History of botany (Sachs; Garnsey).djvu/380

360 animals were known to every one, at least in their more obvious features, the study of vegetable life had to begin with laborious enquiries, whether the different parts of plants are generally necessary to their maintenance and propagation, and what functions must be ascribed to individual parts for the good of the whole. It was no easy matter to make the first step in advance in this subject; something can be learnt of the functions of the parts of animals from direct observation, scarcely anything in the case of plants; and it is only necessary to read Cesalpino and the herbals of the 16th century to see how helpless the botanists were in every case in presence of questions concerning the possible physiological meaning of vegetable organs, when they ventured beyond the conceptions of the root as the organ of nourishment, and of the fruit and seeds as the supposed ultimate object of vegetable life. The physiological arrangements in vegetable organs are not obvious to the eye; they must be concluded from certain incidental circumstances, or logically deduced from the result of experiments. But experiment presupposes the proposing a definite question resting on a hypothesis; and questions and hypotheses can only arise from previous knowledge. An early attempt to connect the subject with existing knowledge was made in the use of the comparison of vegetable with animal life, a comparison which Aristotle had employed with small success. Cesalpino, provided with more botanical and zoological knowledge, endeavoured to arrive at more definite ideas of the movement of the nutrient juices in plants, and when Harvey discovered the circulation of the blood in the beginning of the 17th century, the idea at once arose that there might be a similar circulation of the sap in plants. Thus a first hypothesis, a definite question was framed, and attempts were made to decide it by more exact observation of the ordinary phenomena of vegetation, and still better by experiment; and though a discussion which lasted nearly a hundred years led to the opinion that there is