Vegetable morphology : its history and present condition / by Maxwell T. Masters.

  • Masters, Maxwell Tylden, 1833-1907.
Date:
1862
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Vegetable morphology : its history and present condition / by Maxwell T. Masters. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    account of the process of the doctrine, embodying likewise some of tlie facts connected with its present condition, may not be entirely unac- cej)table, even though no pretensions be made to completeness in these respects. The first indications of what we now call morphology are doubtless to be met with in the writings of Aristotle and Theophrastus; take for instance the following passage from Aristotle—“ As a general nile, a plant possesses potentially both root and stem in every partor this from Theophrastus—“ Some organs exist only according to analogy, and others, though the same, yet exist in a different manner.” Perhaps the most remarkable passage of this sort is one derived from the writings of Nicholas of Damascus, who was probably indebted to Aristotle for the idea. Nicholas was a poet, historian, and statesman, and was sent in the latter capacity as ambassador to Augustus by Herod the Great, B.c. 5. He wrote two books on plants, compiled chiefly from older authors, especially Aristotle, to whom, indeed, until disproved by Mej^er, the work had always been attributed, and as such had been commented on by Albertus Magnus. “The wise men among the antients,” says Nicholas, “ regarded all leaves as fi’uits, but they thought the amount of moisture was too great to allow of their attain- ing maturity and solidity by the influence of external heat and eva- poration produced by the sun. The undigested moisture therefore takes the form of leaves, and the objects for which the leaves are pro- duced are merely that the sun may draw off the moisture through them, and that they may protect the fruit from his heat. Thus the leaves are also, properly speaking, fruits, and as said before, it is only the moisture ascending through them which converts them into leaves. This is the exjjlanatiou of the often fruitless olive-trees, for as soon as digestion is effected, the undigested moisture separates first of all fi’om the more delicate portion and forms leaves, while the digested portion becomes flowers, and when in the autumn this part is matured, the fruit is produced and makes its appearance at the end of the stem at the place appointed for it by Nature.” This, which Meyer calls an anticipation of the metamoi’phosis. is of interest in a purely physio- logical point of view. Not only is there here inferred an intrinsic “ identity between the leaf and the fruit, but that identity is asserted for the physiological reason that the sap, instead of being retarded and reserved in the tree for the purpose of aiding in the formation of the fruit, is hurried into the leaves, and there evaporated by the action of the sun. The general principles here involved are strikingly in accordance with those received and promulgated by modern physio- logists. If evaporation and transpiration be allowed to go on to too great an extent, the leaves indeed may become larger and more numerous, but at the expense of the fruit. Check the undue exercise of the functions of the leaf, retard the flow of the sap by removing a ring of bark, and the sap is thereby accumulated and concentrated, and hence serves to increase cither the quantity or the quality of the fruit, or it may be both. Thus, in this noteworthy passage the mor- phological assertion is corroborated by physiological observation anc