I think, be attributed to the fact that Grew was above all things a naturalist, and Coleridge a philosopher, and that between the two an intellectual gulf is often fixed.
After this somewhat lengthy introduction, it is more than time to turn to our main subject,—the study of Nehemiah Grew's work as a botanist.
Botanical science was in a decidedly decadent condition when Grew entered the field. The era of the herbal was closing. The last English book of any importance which can strictly be included under this head, Parkinson's Theatrum Botanicum, was published the year before Grew was born, and a lull in this kind of work followed. It is true that Culpeper's Herbal appeared later, but this bombastic work was of no botanical value. It was reserved for Morison and Ray to open a new era in British Systematic Botany. At the same time, fresh inspiration was being breathed into the science from quite a different quarter. The herbalists studied plants primarily with a view to understanding their medicinal properties. Nehemiah Grew also approached Botany in the first instance from the medical standpoint, but it was his knowledge of anatomy which opened his mind to the possibility of similar work, with the bodies of plants, instead of those of animals, as the subject. He tells us that he was impressed by the fact that the study of animal anatomy had been carried on actively from early ages, whereas that of vegetable anatomy had been scarcely so much as contemplated. "But considering," he continues, "that both came at first out of the same Hand, and are therefore the Contrivances of the same Wisdom; I thence fully assured my self, that it could not be a vain Design, though possibly unsuccessful, to seek it in both."
Grew was drawn to the study of plant structure at the age of twenty-three, and seven years later he produced his earliest work on the subject, The Anatomy of Vegetables Begun, which was published by the Royal Society in 1672. It will be remembered that the Royal Society was then quite in its youth, its first beginnings only dating back to about 1645[1]. By a curious coincidence,—recalling the classic case of Darwin and Wallace
- ↑ Life of Robert Boyle by Thomas Birch, p. 83, 1744.
