what mischief Grew did with his theory of the fibrous structure of the cell-walls, and how the expression cell-tissue literally taken led the botanists here named and others into utterly incorrect ideas. The works of Du Hamel, Comparetti, and Senebier show that such misconceptions were not confined to Germany, and Hill, a countryman of Grew, according to von Mohl's account pictured to himself cells as cups standing one above another, closed below and open above.
Baron von Gleichen-Russworm (1717-1783), privy counsellor to the Margrave of Anspach, gave much attention to the perfecting of the mechanical arrangements of the microscope, but his plates themselves show how strangely unsuitable these arrangements were. With these instruments he made many observations, which are recorded in two voluminous works, 'Das Neueste aus dem Reich der Pflanzen' (1764) and 'Auserlesene mikroskopische Entdeckungen' (1777–1781). But these works contain little or nothing about microscopic anatomy or the structure of vegetable cells. His observations with the microscope are chiefly devoted to processes of fertilisation and to proving that spermatozoa are contained in the pollen[1] and in connection with these subjects he gives magnified figures of many small flowers, some of them beautifully executed; these figures must have made his works very instructive to many in their time. He saw the stomata, which Grew had already discovered, on the leaves of ferns, but took them for the male organs of fertilisation, which at the same time showed that he was still unacquainted with the existence of stomata in phanerogams.
Caspar Friedrich Wolff[2] in his efforts in phytotomy stands
- ↑ This subject will be noticed again in the history of the sexual theory.
- ↑ C. F. Wolff was born at Berlin in 1733. He studied anatomy under Meckel and botany under Gleditsch, in the Collegium Medico-chirurgicum in that city. He afterwards resorted to the University of Halle, and there made acquaintance with the philosophy of Leibnitz and Wolff, which predominates too much in his dissertation, 'Theoria Generationis' (1759).
