Page:History of botany (Sachs; Garnsey).djvu/566

546 laws were on the whole unsatisfactory, all such explanations were looked upon as impossible and even absurd, while it was forgotten that the vital force, which was to explain everything, was a mere word for everything that could not be explained in the life of organisms. This vital force was personified, and seemed to assume a really tangible form in the movements of plants. But the moment that a phenomenon was handed over to this force, all further investigation was abandoned; the idea with regard to phytodynamical phenomena especially was that of the peasant, who could only explain the movement of the locomotive by supposing that there was a horse shut up in it. Moreover the knowledge of the inner structure of plants was at its lowest point at the end of the 18th century; the spiral threads which could be unwound were the only structural element whose form was to some extent understood, and their hygroscopic movements were supposed to be due to a combination of the pulsations of the vital force with the spiral tendency of the plant. At the same time whole bundles of vessels were taken for spiral fibres, or were supposed to consist of them, and these were thought to be vegetable muscles, which contract under the influence of various kinds of irritation, and so cause the movements in the organs of plants; but it was forgotten that in the organs which exhibit the most striking movements, such as sensitive leaves and leaves that suffer periodical changes of position, these 'muscles' occupy a central position which unfits them for the function ascribed to them. It would be unprofitable and wearisome to give many examples of what is here stated, though many might easily be collected; it will suffice to quote some sentences only from Link's 'Grundlehren der Anatomic und Physiologic' of 1807; they are particularly instructive, because Link declared against the nature-philosophy and professed to be on the side of inductive science. Under the head of movements of plants, he discussed geotropic curvatures and other movements in the superficial manner of the time and only to come to the conclusion, that the direction of