To the Seventeenth Century belong the names of Dr. Turner, “the father of English Botany”; Robert Morison, professor of Botany at Oxford; John Ray, Nehemiah Grew, Malpighi, Henshaw, and Robert Hooke. The two latter were among the first to employ the newly invented microscope to the study of this science. It may be mentioned in passing, that Huygens is said to have taken from Holland to England microscopes about the size of a grain of sand, and that the first microscope consisting of a combination of lenses is attributed to Jansen, a spectacle-maker of Holland. Hooke, whom Herschel calls “the great contemporary and almost the rival of Newton,” gave a tremendous impetus to Microscopy, and practically laid the foundation of Histology or the Inner Morphology of Plants, due to Grew and Malpighi. Schleiden undertook to explain the mysteries of cell formation in 1838, further investigated by Schwann, and is now known as the Schleiden-Schwann theory. Nägeli and Von Mohl continued researches on this line. To the contents of the cell Von Mohl gave the name protoplasm.
In 1849, Hofmeister began investigations into the life-histories of plants, since when the study of Vegetable Physiology has progressed side by side with Chemistry. To Darwin great subjects are due: the cross-fertilization of plants, their reproduction, and their relations to insects and their movements. It may be mentioned, however, that in 1693 Ray attempted to explain the movements of leaves, tendrils, and petals by physical and mechanical laws.
Since the middle of the Nineteenth Century, the branches of Botany that have been particularly studied are Vegetable Physiology and Pathology, Inner Morphology, and Fossil Botany—and the discoveries made have naturally had an effect upon the classification of vegetable life.
According to Agassiz:
“We must come down to the last century, to Linnæus, before we find the history taken up where Aristotle had left it, and some of his suggestions carried out with new freshness and vigor. Aristotle had already distinguished between genera and species; Linnæus took hold of this idea, and gave special names to other groups, of different weight and value. Besides species and genera, he gives us orders and classes—considering classes the most comprehensive, then orders, then genera, then species. He did not, however, represent these groups as distinguished by their nature, but only by their range; they were still to him, as genera and species had been to Aristotle, only larger or smaller groups, not founded upon and limited by different categories of structure. He divided the animal kingdom into six classes: Mammalia, Birds, Reptiles, Fishes, Insects, and Worms.”
Linnæus’s classification was, therefore, the first attempt to group animals; but until Cuvier there was no great principle of classification. In 1707 Buffon succeeded in making Zoology, which had been regarded as a most uninteresting study, popular and respected. He also had the idea of collecting all the known facts of scientific investigation and arranging them systematically. Buffon was ridiculed as a scientist by his contemporaries, Hevelius, Diderot, D’Alembert, and Condillac, who opposed his explanations of natural phenomena. Buffon’s Histoire Naturelle Générale et Particulière is his most important work. A complete edition in thirty-six volumes appeared in Paris in 1749-1788. Although it is said to “have made an epoch in the study of the natural sciences” in Buffon’s day, it now possesses little scientific value.
Cuvier’s classification has never been overthrown. His original investigations in various departments of science, and particularly that of fossil vertebrate animals, opened up new fields of study. His talents with both pen and pencil contributed largely to making that branch of science popular.
Lamarck, Cuvier’s contemporary, divided the animal kingdom into Vertebrates and Invertebrates. Lamarck, like Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, was a believer in the theory of evolution, which was opposed by Cuvier.
Lamarck turned from the study of Meteorology to that of Botany, and later again to that of Zoology. In 1793 he became professor of the natural history of the lower classes of animals in the Jardin des Plantes. His theories have greatly influenced modern science, particularly that of the “Variation of Species,” which was set forth in his Philosophie Zoologique (two vols., Paris, 1809) and other works. Lamarck’s Histoire des Animaux sans Vertèbres (seven vols., Paris, 1815-22) is his greatest work.