Makers of British Botany; a collection of biographies by living botanists
History
Makers of British Botany; a collection of biographies by living botanists
Botanists -- Great Britain -- Biography; Botany -- Great Britain -- History
We are concerned with him simply as a vegetable physiologist and in
that character his fame is imperishable. Of the book which I have been
using as my text, namely, _Vegetable Staticks_, Sachs says: "It was
the first comprehensive work the world had seen which was devoted to
the nutrition of plants and the movement of their sap.... Hales had
the art of making plants reveal themselves. By experiments carefully
planned and cunningly carried out he forced them to betray the energies
hidden in their apparently inactive bodies[58]." These words, spoken by
a great physiologist of our day, form a fitting tribute to one who is
justly described as the father of physiology.
FOOTNOTES:
[17] In 1699 Newton was made master of the Mint and appointed Whiston
his Deputy in the Lucasian Professorship, an office he finally resigned
in 1703 (Brewster's _Life of Newton_, 1831, p. 249).
[18] "There, if anywhere, his dear shade must linger," Trevelyan, _Life
and Letters of Lord Macaulay_, 1 volume edit. 1881, p. 55.
[19] Black's discovery of CO_2, however, was published in 1754, seven
years before Hales died, but Priestley's, Cavendish's and Lavoisier's
work on O and H was later.
[20] 1837, III. p. 389.
[21] _Vegetable Staticks_, p. 346.
[22] Sachs, _Geschichte_, p. 502. Malpighi held similar views.
[23] _Ibid._, p. 499.
[24] Quoted by Caröe, in his paper read before the _Cambridge
Archaeological Society_ on _King's Hostel_ etc., and "Printed for the
Master and Fellows of Trinity Coll." in 1909.
[25] He also held the living of Farringdon in Hampshire where he
occasionally resided.
[26] _Dict. Nat. Biog._
[27] With a certain idleness Pope reduces him to plain Parson Hale, for
the sake of a rhyme in the _Epistle of Martha Blount_, 1. 198.
[28] The original reads "deigned not," an obvious slip.
[29] This he does by means of a network of threads ¼ inch apart.
Pfeffer, _Pflanzenphysiologie_, ed. 1, 1. p. 142, recommends the method
and gives Hales as his authority.
[30] _Pflanzenphysiologie_, 1865 (Fr. Trans. 1868), p. 254.
[31] He gives it as 15·8 square inches, the only instance I have come
across of his use of decimals.
[32] _Arbeiten_, II. p. 182.
[33] See Sachs' _Pflanzenphys._ 1865 (Fr. Trans. 1868), p. 257, where
the above correction is applied to Hales' work.
[34] _Vegetable Staticks_, p. 5.
[35] _Vegetable Staticks_, p. 14.
[36] _Vegetable Staticks_, p. 41.
[37] Janse in _Pringsheinis Jahrb._ XVIII. p. 38. The later literature
is given by Dixon in _Progressus Rei Bot._ III., 1909, p. 58.
[38] Compare F. von Höhnel, _Bot. Zeitung_, 1879, p. 318.
[39] This is also shown by experiment XC, _Vegetable Staticks_, p. 123.
[40] The method by which Hales proposed to record the depth of the sea
is a variant of this apparatus.
[41] _Vegetable Staticks_, p. 92.
[42] According to Sachs (_Geschichte_, p. 509) Ray employed this method.
[43] Other facts show that the "gapped" branches did not behave quite
normally.
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