the settlement of the questions taken up at the commencement of the century. Moreover after 1840, with the appearance of Schleiden and Nägeli on the scene, new points of view were suddenly disclosed, and new aims were proposed in phytotomic investigation; it is no objection to this view of the subject, that the most productive portion of von Mohl's labours falls in the succeeding twenty years, and that during this later period his position is one of equal authority with the new tendency and of participation in it. Up to 1845 his discoveries were the culminating point of the older phytotomy; they put the finishing stroke to the work which Mirbel, Link, Treviranus, and Moldenhawer had begun. The object almost exclusively pursued during all this period was to frame as true a scheme as possible of the inner structure of the mature organs of the plant; it was requisite to gain a right understanding of the diversities of cells and forms of tissues, to classify them and supply them with names, and to secure well-conceived definitions of these names. Hence almost exclusive attention was paid to the configuration of the solid framework of cell-membrane, and of this chiefly in the matured state, to the form of the several elementary organs and their combination in the tissue, to the sculpture of the wall-surfaces, and to the connection of cell-spaces by pores or their separation by closed walls. There was much discussion, especially at first, on the contents of vessels and cells, and on supposed movements of sap in connection with anatomical research, but there was no careful connected investigation of the cell-contents; it was not yet recognised that the true living body of the vegetable cell is only a definite part of the contents inclosed by the cell-wall; the solid walls, the framework of the whole building, were regarded as of primary importance in the structure of the cell. It was not till the following period that in the light of historical development another view asserted itself, namely, that the solid framework of vegetable tissue with all its importance is yet in the genetic sense only a secondary product of the
