Page:History of botany (Sachs; Garnsey).djvu/465



plants take up certain substances from their environ- ment for the purpose of building up their own structures could not be a matter of doubt even in the earliest times; it was also obvious, that movements of the nutrient material must be connected with this proceeding. But it was not so easy to say, what was the nature of this food of plants, in what manner it finds its way into and is distributed in them, and what are the forces employed ; it was even for a long time undecided, whether the food taken up from without surfers any change inside the plant, before it is applied to purposes of growth. Such were the questions which had engaged the attention of Aristotle, and which formed the chief subject of Cesalpino's physiological meditations.

But the questions respecting the nutrition of plants acquired a much more definite shape in the latter half of the 17th century, when the various phenomena of vegetation began to be more closely observed, and some attempt was made to understand their relations to the outer world. Malpighi, the founder of phytotomy, was the first who undertook to explain the share which belongs to the different organs of the plant in the whole work of nutrition; guided by analogy, he perceived that the green leaves are the organs which prepare the food, and that the material so prepared by them passes into all parts of the plant, there to be stored up or employed for purpose