le seul anatomiste de l'académie, et ce ne fut qu'en 1684 qu'on lui joignit M. Mery.’ Eloge de Du Verney, in Œuvres de Fontenelle, vol. vi. p. 392.
474
Cuvier, Hist. des Sciences, part ii. pp. 64–73, 76–80.
475
After Belon, nothing was done in France for the natural history of animals until 1734, when there appeared the first volume of Reaumur's great work. See Swainson on the Study of Nat. Hist. pp. 24, 43.
476
On this remarkable man, who was the first philosophic chemist Europe produced, and who, so early as 1630, anticipated some of the generalizations made a hundred and fifty years later by Lavoisier, see Liebig's Letters on Chemistry, pp. 46, 47; Thomson's Hist. of Chemistry, vol. ii. pp. 95, 96; Humboldt's Cosmos, vol. ii. p. 729; Cuvier, Progrès des Sciences, vol. i. p. 30.
477
Cuvier (Progrès des Sciences, vol. i. p. 30) says of Rey, ‘son écrit était tombé dans l'oubli le plus profond;’ and, in another work, the same great authority writes (Hist. des Sciences, part ii. p. 333): ‘Il y avait plus de quarante ans que Becker avait présenté sa nouvelle théorie, développée par Stahl; il y avait encore plus long-temps que les expériences de Boyle sur la chimie pneumatique avaient été publiées, et cependant, rien de tout cela n'entrait encore dans l'enseignement général de la chimie, du moins en France.’
478
The highest present generalizations of the laws of nutrition are those by M. Chevreul; which are thus summed up by MM. Robin et Verdeil, in their admirable work, Chimie Anatomique, vol. i. p. 203, Paris, 1853: ‘En passant des plantes aux animaux, nous voyons que plus l'organisation de ces derniers est compliquée, plus les aliments dont ils se nourrissent sont complexes et analogues par leurs principes immédiats aux principes des organes qu'ils doivent entretenir.
‘En définitive, on voit que les végétaux se nourrissent d'eau, d'acide carbonique, d'autres gaz et de matières organiques à l'état d'engrais, ou en d'autres termes altérées, c'est-à-dire ramenées à l'état de principes plus simples, plus solubles. Au contraire, les animaux plus élevés dans l'échelle organique ont besoin de matières bien plus complexes quant aux principes immédiats qui les composent, et plus variées dans leurs propriétés.’
479
Brunfels in 1530, and Fuchs in 1542, were the two first writers who observed the vegetable kingdom for themselves, instead of copying what the ancients had said. Compare Whewell's Hist. of the Sciences, vol. iii. pp. 305, 306, with Pulteney's Hist. of Botany, vol. i. p. 38.
480
The microscope was exhibited in London, by Drebbel, about 1620; and this appears to be the earliest unquestionable notice of its use, though some writers assert that it was invented at the beginning of the seventeenth century, or even in 1590. Compare the different statements, in Pouillet, Elémens de Physique, vol. ii. p. 357; Humboldt's Cosmos, vol. ii. pp. 699, 700; Sprengel, Hist. de la Médecine, vol. iv. p. 337; Winckler, Gesch. der Botanik, p. 136; Quekett's Treatise on the Microscope, 1848, p. 2; Cuvier, Hist. des Sciences, part ii. p. 470; Hallam's Lit. of Europe, vol. iii. p. 202; Leslie's Nat. Philos. p. 52. On the subsequent improvement of the microscope during the seventeenth century, see Brewster's Life of Newton, vol. i. pp. 29, 242, 243.
481
See Balfour's Botany, p. 15. In Pulteney's Progress of Botany in England, this beautiful discovery is, if I rightly remember, not even alluded to; but it appears, from a letter written in 1672, that it was then becoming generally known, and had been confirmed by Grew and Malpighi. Ray's Correspond. edit. 1848, p. 98. Compare Richard, Eléments de Botanique, p. 46; where, however, M. Richard erroneously supposes that Grew did not know of the tracheæ till 1682.
482
Compare Cuvier, Hist. des Sciences, part ii. p. 471, with Thomson's Vegetable Chemistry, p. 950.
483
Dr. Thomson (Vegetable Chemistry, p. 950) says: ‘But the person to whom we are indebted for the first attempt to ascertain the structure of plants by dissection and microscopical observations, was Dr. Nathaniel Grew.’ The character of Grew's inquiries, as ‘viewing the internal, as well as external parts of plants,’ is also noticed in Ray's Correspond. p. 188; and M. Winckler (Gesch. der Botanik, p. 382) ascribes to him and Malpighi the ‘neuen Aufschwung’ taken by vegetable physiology late in the seventeenth century. See also, on Grew, Lindley's Botany, vol. i. p. 93; and Third Report of Brit. Assoc. p. 27.
484
The first book of his Anatomy of Plants was laid before the Royal Society in 1670, and printed in 1671. Hallam's Lit. of Europe, vol. iii. p. 580; and Thomson's Hist. of the Royal Society, p. 44.
485
‘The presence of sexual organs in plants was first shown in 1676, by Sir Thomas Millington; and it was afterwards confirmed by Grew, Malpighi, and Ray.’ Balfour's Botany, p. 236. See also Pulteney's Progress of Botany, vol. i. pp. 336, 337; and Lindley's Botany, vol. ii. p. 217: and, as to Ray, who was rather slow in admitting the discovery, see Lankester's Mem. of Ray, p. 100. Before this, the sexual system of vegetables had been empirically known to several of the ancients, but never raised to a scientific truth. Compare Richard, Eléments de Botanique, pp. 353, 427, 428, with Matter, Hist. de l'Ecole d'Alexandrie, vol. ii. p. 9.
486
In July 1665 he writes from Paris to his father, ‘The lecture of plants here is only the naming of them, their degrees in heat and cold, and sometimes their use in physick; scarce a word more than may be seen in every herball.’ Browne's Works, vol. i. p. 108.
487
Cuvier mentioning the inferiority of Tournefort's views to those of his predecessors, gives as an instance, ‘puisqu'il a rejeté les sexes des plantes.’ Hist. des Sciences, part ii. p. 496. Hence he held that the farina was ex-crementitious. Pulteney's Progress of Botany, vol. i. p. 340.
488
This is admitted even by his eulogist Duvau. Biog. Univ. vol. xlvi. p. 363.
489
On the method of Tournefort, which was that of a corrollist, compare Richard, Eléments de Botanique, p. 547; Jussieu's Botany, edit. Wilson, 1849, p. 516; Ray's Correspond. pp. 381, 382; Lankester's Mem. of Ray, p. 49; Winckler, Gesch. der Botanik, p. 142. Cuvier (Hist. des Sciences, part ii. p. 496), with quiet irony, says of it, ‘vous voyez, messieurs, que cette méthode a le mérite d'une grande clarté; qu'elle est fondée sur la forme de la fleur, et par conséquent sur des considérations agréables à saisir… Ce qui en fit le succès, c'est que Tournefort joignit à son ouvrage une figure de fleur et de fruit appartenant à chacun de ses genres.’ Even in this, he appears to have been careless, and is said to have described ‘a great many plants he never examined nor saw.’ Letter from Dr. Sherard, in Nichols's Illustrations of the Eighteenth Century, vol. i. p. 356.
le seul anatomiste de l'académie, et ce ne fut qu'en 1684 qu'on lui joignit M. Mery.’ 