Malpighi was the founder of microscopic anatomy and a pioneer in the study of plant development. He approached the subject through the study of plant tissues. His Appendix adds to the work on chick embryology Malpighi published in 1673.  As Adelmann noted (1966, p. 697), Malpighii's De ovo incubato work was submitted to Henry Oldenburg of the Royal Society in February, 1672 and the Appendix was submitted to him 8 months later, in October—although it was not published until 1675, along with the first part of the Anatome Plantarum. The second dissertation (the Appendix) was based on “an epochal advance in technique” that “was of enormous assistance to him”: the discovery that he could remove the blastoderm from the yolk and mount it on glass for examination under the microscope (Adelmann, 1966, p. 833 ff.).