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vegetable physiologists at the close of the period before us, Treviranus and Meyen, though they are not in accord with one another in their general conception of the subject. It may be said that all the prejudices and errors, built up on the foundation of the hypothesis of a vital force during the first thirty years of the 19th century, culminated in Treviranus; while others were already setting up the mechanical explanation of the phenomena of vegetation as the one object to be attained, Treviranus produced once more the whole machinery of the obsolete doctrine of the vital force, and with such effect, that his 'Physiologic der Gewachse' was already obsolete when it appeared in 1835. The second volume of Meyen's 'Neues System der Pflanzenphysiologie' was a striking contrast to the work of Treviranus; Meyen endeavours as far as possible to trace back the phenomena of vegetation to mechanical and chemical causes, though he does not often succeed in bringing anything to light that is new or of lasting service. He, like Treviranus, was deficient in sound training in chemistry and physics; they did not stand in this respect, as Hales and Malpighi once did, at the highest point of knowledge of their time. At the same time there was a great difference in the way in which each dealt with the writings of his predecessors; Treviranus, who had done good service in former years in phytotomy, was not equal to the task which he had now undertaken; his physiological expositions are marked by feebleness of thought and by an inability to survey as from a higher ground the connection between the facts; he distrusts all that had been done during the previous thirty years, and almost everywhere appeals to the publications of the 18th century; he lives indeed in the ideas of the past, without gaining vigour from the forcible reasoning and freshness of thought of a Malpighi, a Mariotte, or a Hales. Meyen's treatment of his subject is on the contrary fresh and vigorous; he does not disregard the old, but he holds chiefly to the modern conquests of science; while Treviranus with singular