Link is more happy in taking the part that surrounds the aperture for a cell, or a group of cells. Rudolphi considers the great cavities in hollow stems and in the tissue of water-plants as the only air-passages in plants; Link explains these cavities as gaps caused by the irregular growth of cellular tissue. With Rudolphi the word vessel means not only vascular forms in wood, but milk-vessels and resin-ducts also, and to the former he even transfers Malpighi's view of the structure of spiral vessels. Link designates the tubes of the wood only as vessels, combining the most various forms of them under the term spiral vessels; he excludes milk-vessels, resin-ducts, and the like from the conception of a vessel, and in this he is somewhat inconsistent, since he assumes with Rudolphi that a vessel, in plants as in animals, is a canal for the conveyance of nutrient sap.
With all these contradictions, the two essays agree in adopting the old Malpighian view of the growth in thickness of stems, according to which the new layers of wood are formed from the inner layers of bast, while between the bast-cells, which are here taken to be identical with woody fibre, new spiral vessels arise contemporaneously, and, as Link expressly says, from juices which pour out between the bast-cells.
It is hard to understand how two treatises, so contradictory as they have been shown to be, could have both received a prize at the same time, or how the great difference could have been overlooked between Link's sensible and well-arranged account of his subject, and Rudolphi's uncritical statements, which everywhere rely more on old authority than on his own observation. It is however certain that Link's better production is inferior to Bernhardi's treatise, unless we choose to consider the greater copiousness of detail in Link, the number of his observations, and his aquaintance with the literature of the subject, as giving him the advantage. His figures, as well as Rudolphi's, are not so good as those of Bernhardi.
