Page:History of botany (Sachs; Garnsey).djvu/493

Wolff submitted leaves lying in water containing no air to the vacuum of the air-pump, and saw air-bubbles issue, especially on the under side; but when he allowed the atmospheric pressure to come into play again the leaves became filled with water, and a piece of fir-wood treated in a similar manner sank after the infiltration. In similar' experiments with apricots air issued from the rind and especially from the stalk. Wolff's pupil Thiimmig described similar experiments in his ' Griindliche Erlauterung der merkwiirdigsten Begebenheiten in der Natur,' 1723, and both continued in this question, as in all their physiological and phytotomical views, faithful adherents of Malpighi, as it was wisest then to be. We must linger a moment longer over Christian Wolff, because he published a few years later a general view of the nutrition of plants in a popular form. Wolff's services in the dissemination of natural science in Germany seem not to have been as highly appreciated up to the present time as they deserve to be; his various works on natural science, some of which took a wide range and were partly founded on his own observations, were full of matter and for his time very instructive; they contributed moreover to introduce more liberal habits of thought at a time when gross superstitions, such as that of palingenesia, reigned even among men who published scientific treatises in the German Academy of Sciences (the 'Acta of the Leopoldina).' If Wolff's own scientific researches show more good will than skill, yet he had an advantage over many others in a really philosophical training, a habit of abstract thought which enabled him to fix with certainty on what was fundamentally important in the observations of others, and thus to expound the scientific knowledge of his day from higher points of view. For this reason his work which appeared in 1723, ' Verniinftige Gedanken von den Wirkungen der Natur,' deserves recognition. It is a work of the kind which would now be called a ' Kosmos,' and treats of the physical qualities of bodies generally, of the heavenly bodies and specially of our own planet, of meteor-