Note 38 — PERIOD IV
Reading edition
Hooke figured a thin section of dry cork in his Micrographia (1665), remarking that it was divided into "little boxes or cells." The word cell was suggested by the resemblance of the tissue to a honeycomb; since 1838 it has been thoughtlessly extended from the skeleton to the particle of living matter enclosed within it. Robert Brown (1831) showed that a nucleus is usual in plant-cells; it had been figured by Fontana and others long before. Down to 1838 no results of biological interest followed from the discovery.