CHAPTER IV.
Morphology Under the Influence Of the Doctrine Of Metamorphosis and Of the Spiral Theory.
1790–1850.
The efforts of Jussieu, De Candolle, and Robert Brown were directed to the discovery of the relationship between different species of plants by comparing them together; the doctrine of metamorphosis founded by Goethe set itself from the first to bring to light the hidden relationship between the different organs of one and the same plant. As De Candolle's doctrine of symmetry derived the different species of plants from an ideal plan of symmetry or type, so the doctrine of metamorphosis assumed an ideal fundamental organ, from which the different leaf-forms in a plant could be derived. The stem came into consideration only as carrying the leaves, the root was almost entirely disregarded. As the resemblance of nearly allied species of plants suggests itself naturally and unsought to the mind of the unbiassed observer, so also does the connection between different organs of a leafy nature in one and the same plant. Cesalpino called the corolla simply a 'folium' (leaf); he and Malpighi regarded the cotyledons also as leaves; Jung called attention to the variety of the leaf-forms, which are found in many plants at different heights on the same stem; Caspar Friedrich Wolff, the first who bestowed systematic consideration on the subject, declared in 1766, that
