tion of visible structure must not be disturbed by physiological
views; he used therefore his thorough physiological knowledge
chiefly to give a more definite direction to his anatomical
researches, and to illustrate the connection between structure
and function in organs. By scarcely any other phytotomist
was the true relation between physiological and anatomical
research so well understood and turned to such practical
account as by von Mohl, who was equally averse to the entire
separation of phytotomy from physiology, and to the undue
mixing up of the one with the other, which has led his
predecessors, Meyen especially, into misconceptions.
His anatomical researches profited by his extraordinary technical knowledge of the microscope; he could himself polish and set lenses, which would bear comparison with the best of their time. As the majority of botanists from 1830 to 1850 had little knowledge of the kind, there was no one so well qualified as von Mohl to give instruction in short treatises on the practical advantages of a particular instrument, to remove prejudices and finally as in his 'Mikrographie' (1846) to give detailed directions for the management of the instrument.
But his mental endowments were of course of the higher importance, and it is difficult to imagine any more happily suited to the requirements of vegetable anatomy during the period from 1830 to 1850. At a time when men were building fanciful theories on inexact observations, when Gaudichaud was once more explaining the growth in thickness of the woody portions of the plant after the manner of Wolff and Du Petit-Thouars, when Desfontaines' account of the endogenous and exogenous growth of stems was still accepted, when Mirbel was endeavouring to support his old theory of the formation of cells by new observations and beautiful figures, when Schulz Schulzenstein's wildest notions respecting laticiferous vessels were being rewarded with a prize by the Paris Academy, when Schleiden's hastily adopted views respecting cells and fertilisation appeared on the scene with great external success, von
