Poetry of the Vegetable World. A Popular Exposition of the Science of Botany, and its Relation to Man

New York: Newman & Ivison, 1853. First American edition.

1853 FIRST AMERICAN EDITION OF MONOGRAPH ON BOTANY BY M. J. SCHLEIDEN, EVOLUTIONIST AND CO-FOUNDER OF THE CELL THEORY, ILLUSTRATED WITH LITHOGRAPHIC PLATES.

7 1/2 inches tall hardcover, publisher's mauve cloth binding, blindstamped publisher's device to covers, gilt title to spine, xvii, (29-) 360 pp, 4 fine lithographed plates (2 partially colored), light wear to head of spine, spine faded, embosssed library stamps to pp 29 and 260, not affecting plates, light foxing to first few pages, very good in custom archival mylar cover. CHAPTERS INCLUDE: The Eye and the Microscope, The Internal Structure of Plants, On the Propagation of Plants, The Morphology of Plants, About the Weather, What Does Man Live Upon?, On the Milk-Sap of Plants, A Sketch of the Cactus Tribe, The Geography of Plants, or the Districution of Plants Upon the Surface of the Earth, History of the Vegetable World, The Aesthetics of the Vegetable World.

MATTHIAS JAKOB SCHLEIDEN (1804 – 1881) was a German botanist and co-founder of the cell theory, along with Theodor Schwann and Rudolf Virchow. While a professor of botany at the University of Jena, he wrote Contributions to Phytogenesis (1838), in which he stated that the different parts of the plant organism are composed of cells. Thus, Schleiden and Schwann became the first to formulate what was then an informal belief as a principle of biology equal in importance to the atomic theory of chemistry. He also recognized the importance of the cell nucleus, discovered in 1831 by the Scottish botanist Robert Brown, and sensed its connection with cell division. Schleiden was one of the first German biologists to accept Charles Darwin's theory of evolution. He became professor of botany at the University of Dorpat in 1863. He concluded that all plant parts are made of cells and that an embryonic plant organism arises from the one cell.