being merely a playing with the unmeaning phrases of the
current nature-philosophy, while it revived gross errors like
Hedwig's doctrine of the presence of lymphatic vessels in the tissue of the epidermis, and made the Mosses consist of
conferva-threads. Phytotomy was on the contrary really
enriched by the miscellaneous works of Treviranus published in 1821, especially in respect to questions connected with the epidermis, and by Amici's discovery in 1823, that the inter-cellular spaces in plants contain not sap but air, and that the
vessels too chiefly convey air. We may quietly pass over the
later writings of Mirbel, Schulze, Link, Turpin and others, which appeared after 1812 and before 1830, as our business is not so much with an account of the literature of the subject as with
evidence of real advance.
Meyen and von Mohl may be said to have commenced their labours with 1830, and in the course of the succeeding ten years they became the chief authorities on phytotomy, though a highly meritorious work of Mirbel's on Marchantia polymorpha and the formation of pollen in Cucurbita falls as late as 1835. We may even pass over so elaborate a work as the 'Physiologie der Gewachse' of Treviranus (1835-1838), which embraces also the whole of phytotomy, because though its treatment of some of the details is good, it presents its subject virtually from the points of view opened before 1812. This work, though it neglects no part of its subject and contains much useful reference to the works of other observers, was unfortunately out of date at the time of its appearance, for owing to von Mohl's labours an entirely new spirit had entered since 1828 into the treatment of phytotomy.
Though Meyen and von Mohl must be regarded as the chief representatives of phytotomy from 1830 to 1840, yet they are men of very different importance in the science. The essential difference between them cannot perhaps be better shown than by pointing to the fact, that Meyen's labours cannot at present claim more than a historical interest, while von Mohl's earliest
