CORTI, Bonaventura.

In Lucca: appresso Giuseppe Rocchi, .1774

8vo, pp. 207, (1), 3 folding copperplates. Original paper boards, uncut. A little foxing or browning, but a fine copy.

FIRST EDITION. The discovery of cyclosis. Corti was professor of physics in the college of Reggio. There he won the esteem of the Duchess Teresa Cybo d’Este who presented him with two excellent microscopes manufactured by Dollond, which enabled him to undertake valuable research. He published his results in the present book, which contains Corti’s sensational discovery of protoplasmic movements in plant cells. “The continuous streaming motion which we now term ‘cyclosis’ was discovered as far back as 1774 by the Abbé Corti in the cells of water plants, such as Chara and Nitella. His observations were overlooked, and the phenomenon was rediscovered by L.C. Treviranus in the early years of the 19th century (1811)” (Hughes, A history of cytology, p. 41). Sachs, History of botany, p. 545.

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