It is interesting to note that this botanist compared the falling of leaves to the shedding of an insect’s skin, in this respect at any rate he had advanced no further than Aristotle, who compared leaf-fall to the moulting of a bird. On the other hand, the Italian was the first scientist to describe the pores (stomata) of leaves, though he never discovered that they occurred on all leaves. He, first of all men, showed that nectar was formed by the flower and not transferred thence from other sources as had previously been believed; he too explained accurately for the first time the process of germination in the seed. It was not alone as a botanist, however, that Malpighi was celebrated. He elucidated the various changes which take place during the hatching of an egg; he was the first man to give an accurate account of the structure of an insect, and this he did in his work on the Anatomy of the Silkworm. Using a simple microscope for his investigations, he contracted an eye affliction during this period from which he suffered more or less severely all the rest of his life. He discovered the breathing tubes of insects and that when they are covered with grease the insect will die “in the time that one can say the Lord’s Prayer”; the heart, the silk glands, the development of wings and legs were all discovered for the first time by this untiring worker, aided by his simple microscope. Pages could be filled with accounts of Malpighi’s other scientific work on the structure of the lung, the liver and kidney, the life of the liver fluke and a hundred and one other subjects. Though undoubtedly a great and clever microscopist, the general estimate seems to be that his work had little influence upon the scientific world. The main reason is that he was ahead of his time; men of the day concluded, for instance, that in his Anatomy of Plants he had said the last word on the subject, that there was no more to be learned. An English worker, Nehemiah Grew, carried the Italian scientist’s studies of plant structure a little further and his Anatomy of Plants contains many new and often accurate observations. His studies also led him to discover the structure of the ridges and sweat pores of the human hand, in fact Grew may be looked upon as the originator of the study of finger prints.