[36] Linnæus (Fund. Bot. § 134, and Sponsalia Plantarum) gives it as above; Harvey has "Ex ovo omnia"; "ovum esse primordium commune omnibus animalibus," etc.
[37] Harvey need not have gone outside the writings of Aristotle to get the substance of his generalisation. He would have found there that the chief task of both plants and animals is propagation, either by seeds, or eggs, which Aristotle believed to be equivalent to seeds (Hist. anim., VIII., i.; De anim. gen., I., iv.; I., xxiii.). Aristotle excepted the "imperfect animals," such as insects, and the seedless plants, concerning both of which his knowledge was misty and inaccurate; there is no indication that Harvey was better informed.
[38] Hooke figured a thin section of dry cork in his Micrographia (1665), remarking that it was divided into "little boxes or cells." The word cell was suggested by the resemblance of the tissue to a honeycomb; since 1838 it has been thoughtlessly extended from the skeleton to the particle of living matter enclosed within it. Robert Brown (1831) showed that a nucleus is usual in plant-cells; it had been figured by Fontana and others long before. Down to 1838 no results of biological interest followed from the discovery.
[39] Parkinson (1629) speaks of a stove or hothouse, "such as are used in Germany."
[40] The graceful practice of naming genera of plants after benefactors to botany or horticulture was introduced by Father Plumier (1646-1704), who gave the names of L'Obel and Fuchs to the Lobelia and Fuchsia, and whose own name is appropriately borne by the frangipane (Plumeria).
[41] See the account of Cartagena in the Personal Narrative.
[42] See particularly his Essai sur la géographie des plantes (1805).
[43] Baer's expressions are so guarded that his real opinions in 1828 can only be surmised. He never accepted a consistent theory of organic evolution.