commencement of this period (1800–1840), and important as was the advance made by von Mohl towards the end of it, yet we may include all that was done during that time in one view, since the questions examined were essentially the same; like Mirbel and Treviranus, Moldenhawer and Meyen, von Mohl was chiefly occupied up to the year 1840 in deciding the questions, what is the nature of the solid framework of cellulose in the plant in its matured state, whether a single or double wall of membrane lies between two cell-spaces, what is the true account of pits and pores, and of the various forms of fibres and vessels; one great result of these efforts must be mentioned, namely, the establishment of the fact that all the elementary organs of plants may be referred to one fundamental form, the closed cell; that the fibres are only elongated cells, but that true vessels are formed by cells which are arranged in rows, and have entered into free communication with one another.
Phytotomists before 1840, and von Mohl especially, had occasionally paid attention among other things to circumstances connected with the history of development, and single cases of the formation of various cells had been described by von Mohl and Mirbel between 1830 and 1840, but greater interest was taken in the right understanding of the structure of mature tissues; physiological questions also, though no longer of the first importance in anatomical investigations, were still of weight, so far as the enquiry was influenced by the relation of anatomical structure to the functions of elementary organs. But with Schleiden and Nägeli the question of historical development and the purely morphological examination of interior structure assumed an exclusive prominence in phytotomy. The first commencement of vegetable cells especially and their growth were the subjects now discussed. Schleiden had proposed a theory of cell-formation before 1840, which, resting on too few and inexact observations, referred all processes of cell-formation in the vegetable kingdom to a
