[1] On the alteration of streets alone $26,691,496 were expended from
1822 to 1880.
[2] Faneuil Hall is the headquarters of the Ancient and Honourable
Artillery Company of Boston, the oldest military organization of the
country, organized in 1638.
[3] The dam is 1250 ft. long, with a maximum height of 129 ft., only
750 ft. having a depth of more than 40 ft. from high water to rock.
The entire surface of the basin was scraped to bed rock, sand or
mineral earth, this alone costing $3,000,000. Connected with the
reservoir is an aqueduct, of which 2 m. are tunnel and 7 m. covered
masonry. The metropolitan system as planned in 1905 for the near
future contemplated storage for 80,000,000,000 gallons, reservoirs
holding 2,200,000,000 gallons for immediate use, aqueducts capable of
carrying 420,000,000 gallons daily, and a minimum daily supply of
173,000,000 gallons.
[4] In 1851 the mayor of the English Boston sent over a copy of that
city's seals, framed in oak from St Botolph's church, of which John
Cotton, the famous Boston divine (he came over in 1633) had been
vicar. The seals now hang in the city hall. In 1855 a number of
Americans, including Charles Francis Adams and Edward Everett, and
also various descendants of Cotton, united to restore the south-west
chapel of St Botolph's church, and to erect in it a memorial tablet
to Cotton's memory. The total amount raised by subscription for this
purpose was L673.
BOSTON, a game of cards invented during the last quarter of the 18th
century. It is said to have originated in Boston, Massachusetts, during
the siege by the British. It seems to have been invented by the officers
of the French fleet which lay for a time off the town of Marblehead, and
the name of the two small islands in Marblehead harbour which have, from
the period of the American Revolution, been called Great and Little
Misery, correspond with expressions used in the game. William Tudor, in
his _Letters on the Eastern States_, published in 1821, states somewhat
differently that "A game of cards was invented in Versailles and called
in honour of the town, Boston; the points of the game are allusive,
'great independence,' 'little independence,' 'great misery,' 'little
misery,' &c. It is composed partly of whist and partly of quadrille,
though partaking mostly of the former." The game enjoyed an
extraordinary vogue in high French society, where it was the fashion at
that time to admire all things American. "The ladies... filled my
pockets with bon-bons, and ... called me _'le petit Bostonien.'_ It was
indeed by the name of Bostonian that all Americans were known in France
then. The war having broken out in Boston and the first great battle
fought in its neighbourhood, gave to that name universal celebrity. A
game invented at that time, played with cards, was called 'Boston,' and
is to this day (1830) exceedingly fashionable at Paris by that
appellation" (_Recollections of Samuel Breck_, Philadelphia, 1877).
There was a tradition that Dr Franklin was fond of the game and even
that he had a hand in its invention. At the middle of the 19th century
it was still popular in Europe, and to a less degree in America, but its
favour has steadily declined since then.
The rules of Boston recognized in English-speaking countries differ
somewhat from those in vogue in France. According to the former, two
packs of 52 cards are used, which rank as in whist, both for cutting
and dealing. Four players take part, and there are usually no
partners. Counters are used, generally of three colours and values,
and each hand is settled for as soon as finished. The entire first
pack is dealt out by fours and fives, and the second pack is cut for
the trump, the suit of the card turned being "first preference," the
other suit of the same colour "second preference" or "colour," while
the two remaining suits are "plain suits." The eldest hand then
announces that he will make a certain number of tricks provided he may
name the trump, or lose a certain number without trumps. The different
bids are called by various names, but the usual ones are as
follows:--To win five tricks, "Boston." (To win) "six tricks." (To
win) "seven tricks." To lose twelve tricks, after discarding one card
that is not shown, "little _misere_." (To win) "eight tricks." (To
win) "nine tricks." To lose every trick, "grand _misere_." (To win)
"ten tricks." (To win) "eleven tricks." To lose twelve tricks, after
discarding one card that is not shown, the remaining twelve cards
being exposed on the table but not liable to be called, "little
spread." (To win) "twelve tricks." To lose every trick with exposed
cards, "grand spread." To win thirteen tricks, "grand slam." If a
player does not care to bid he may pass, and the next player bids.
Succeeding players may "overcall," _i.e_. overbid, previous bidders.
Players passing may thereafter bid only "_miseres_." If a player bids
seven but makes ten he is paid for the three extra tricks, but on a
lower scale than if he had bid ten. If no bid should be made, a
"_misere partout_" (general poverty) is often played, the trump being
turned down and each player striving to take as few tricks as
possible. Payments are made by each loser according to the value of
the winner's bid and the overtricks he has scored. There are regular
tables of payments. In America overtricks are not usually paid for. In
French Boston the knave of diamonds arbitrarily wins over all other
cards, even trumps. The names of the different bids remind one of the
period of the American Revolution, including "Independence,"
"Philadelphia," "Souveraine," "Concordia," &c. Other variations of the
game are _Boston de Fontainebleau_ and Russian Boston.
BOSTONITE, in petrology, a fine-grained, pale-coloured, grey or pinkish
rock, which consists essentially of alkali-felspar (orthoclase,
microperthite, &c.). Some of them contain a small amount of interstitial
quartz (quartz bostonites); others have a small percentage of lime,
which occasions the presence of a plagioclase felspar (maenite,
gauteite, lime-bostonite). Other minerals, except apatite, zircon and
magnetite, are typically absent. They have very much the same
composition as the trachytes; and many rocks of this series have been
grouped with these or with the orthophyres. Typically they occur as
dikes or as thin sills, often in association with nepheline-syenite; and
they seem to bear a complementary relationship to certain types of
lamprophyre, such as camptonite and monchiquite. Though nowhere very
common they have a wide distribution, being known from Scotland, Wales,
Massachusetts, Montreal, Portugal, Bohemia, &c. The lindoites and
quartz-lindoites of Norway are closely allied to the bostonites.
BOSTROM, CHRISTOFFER JACOB (1797-1866), Swedish philosopher, was born at
Pitea and studied at Upsala, where from 1840 to 1863 he was professor of
practical philosophy. His philosophy, as he himself described it, is a
thoroughgoing rational idealism founded on the principle that the only
true reality is spiritual. God is Infinite Spirit in whom all existence
is contained, and is outside the limitations of time and space. Thus
Bostrom protests not only against empiricism but also against those
doctrines of Christian theology which seemed to him to picture God as
something less than Pure Spirit. In ethics the highest aim is the
direction of actions by reason in harmony with the Divine; so the
state, like the individual, exists solely in God, and in its most
perfect form consists in the harmonious obedience of all its members to
a constitutional monarch; the perfection of mankind as a whole is to be
sought in a rational orderly system of such states in obedience to
Universal Reason. This system differs from Platonism in that the "ideas"
of God are not archetypal abstractions but concrete personalities.
Bostrom's writings were edited by H. Edfeldt (2 vols., Upsala, 1883).
For his school see SWEDEN: _Literature_; also H. Hoffding, _Filosofien
i Sverig_ (German trans. in _Philos. Monatsheften_, 1879), and
_History of Mod. Philos._ (Eng. trans., 1900), p. 284; R. Falckenberg,
_Hist. of Phil._ (Eng. trans., 1895); A. Nyblaeus, _Om den Bostromske
filosofien_ (Lund, 1883), and _Karakteristik af den Bostromska
filosofien_ (Lund, 1892).
BOSWELL, JAMES (1740-1795), Scottish man of letters, the biographer of
Samuel Johnson, was born at Edinburgh on the 29th of October 1740. His
grandfather was in good practice at the Scottish bar, and his father,
Alexander Boswell of Auchinleck, was also a noted advocate, who, on his
elevation to the supreme court in 1754, took the name of his Ayrshire
property as Lord Auchinleck. A Thomas Boswell (said upon doubtful
evidence to have been a minstrel in the household of James IV.) was
killed at Flodden, and since 1513 the family had greatly improved its
position in the world by intermarriage with the first Scots nobility. In
contradiction to his father, a rigid Presbyterian Whig, James was "a
fine boy, wore a white cockade, and prayed for King James until his
uncle Cochrane gave him a shilling to pray for King George, which he
accordingly did" ("Whigs of all ages are made in the same way" was
Johnson's comment). He met one or two English boys, and acquired a
"tincture of polite letters" at the high school in Edinburgh. Like R.L.
Stevenson, he early frequented society such as that of the actors at the
Edinburgh theatre, sternly disapproved of by his father. At the
university, where he was constrained for a season to study civil law, he
met William Johnson Temple, his future friend and correspondent. The
letters of Boswell to his "Atticus" were first published by Bentley in
1857. One winter he spent at Glasgow, where he sat under Adam Smith, who
was then lecturing on moral philosophy and rhetoric.
In 1760 he was first brought into contact with "the elegance, the
refinement and the liberality" of London society, for which he had long
sighed. The young earl of Eglintoun took him to Newmarket and introduced
him into the society of "the great, the gay and the ingenious." He wrote
a poem called "The Cub at Newmarket," published by Dodsley in 1762, and
had visions of entering the Guards. Reclaimed with some difficulty by
his father from his rakish companions in the metropolis, he contrived to
alleviate the irksomeness of law study in Edinburgh by forcing his
acquaintance upon the celebrities then assembled in the northern
capital, among them Kames, Blair, Robertson, Hume and Sir David
Dalrymple (Lord Hailes), of whose sayings on the Northern Circuit he
kept a brief journal. Boswell had already realized his vocation, the
exercise of which was to give a new word to the language. He had begun
to Boswellize. He was already on the track of bigger game--the biggest
available in the Britain of that day. In the spring of 1763 Boswell came
to a composition with his father. He consented to give up his pursuit of
a guidon in the Guards and three and sixpence a day on condition that
his father would allow him to study civil law on the continent. He set
out in April 1763 by "the best road in Scotland" with a servant, on
horseback like himself, in "a cocked hat, a brown wig, brown coat made
in the court fashion, red vest, corduroy small clothes and long military
boots." On Monday, the 16th of May 1763, in the back shop of Tom Davies
the bookseller, No. 8 Russell Street, Covent Garden, James Boswell first
met "Dictionary Johnson," the great man of his dreams, and was severely
buffeted by him. Eight days later, on Tuesday, the 24th of May, Boswell
boldly called on Mr Johnson at his chambers on the first floor of No. 1
Inner Temple Lane. On this occasion Johnson pressed him to stay; on the
13th of June he said, "Come to me as often as you can"; on the 25th of
June Boswell gave the great man a little sketch of his own life, and
Johnson exclaimed with warmth, "Give me your hand; I have taken a
liking to you." Boswell experienced a variety of sensations, among which
exultation was predominant. Some one asked, "Who is this Scotch cur at
Johnson's heels?" "He is not a cur," replied Goldsmith, "he is only a
bur. Tom Davies flung him at Johnson in sport, and he has the faculty of
sticking." Johnson was fifty-four at this time and Boswell twenty-three.
After June 1763 they met on something like 270 subsequent days. These
meetings formed the memorable part of Boswell's life, and they are told
inimitably in his famous biography of his friend.
The friendship, consecrated by the most delightful of biographies, and
one of the most gorgeous feasts in the whole banquet of letters, was not
so ill-assorted as has been inconsiderately maintained. Boswell's
freshness at the table of conversation gave a new zest to every maxim
that Johnson enunciated, while Boswell developed a perfect genius for
interpreting the kind of worldly philosophy at which Johnson was so
unapproachable. Both men welcomed an excuse for avoiding the task-work
of life. Johnson's favourite indulgence was to talk; Boswell's great
idea of success to elicit memorable conversation. Boswell is almost
equally admirable as a reporter and as an interviewer, as a collector
and as a researcher. He prepared meetings for Johnson, he prepared
topics for him, he drew him out on questions of the day, he secured a
copy of his famous letter to Lord Chesterfield, he obtained an almost
verbatim report of Johnson's interview with the king, he frequented the
tea-table of Miss Williams, he attended the testy old scholar on lengthy
peregrinations in the Highlands and in the midlands. "Sir," said Johnson
to his follower, "you appear to have only two subjects, yourself and me,
and I am sick of both." Yet thorough as the scheme was from the outset,
and admirable as was the devotedness of the biographer, Boswell was far
too volatile a man to confine himself to any one ambition in life that
was not consistent with a large amount of present fame and notoriety. He
would have liked to Boswellize the popular idol Wilkes, or Chatham, or
Voltaire, or even the great Frederick himself. As it was, during his
continental tour he managed in the autumn of 1765 to get on terms with
Pasquale di Paoli, the leader of the Corsican insurgents in their unwise
struggle against Genoa. After a few weeks in Corsica he returned to
London in February 1766, and was received by Johnson with the utmost
cordiality. In accordance with the family compact referred to, he was
now admitted advocate at Edinburgh, and signalized his return to the law
by an enthusiastic pamphlet entitled _The Essence of the Douglas Cause_
(November 1767), in which he vigorously repelled the charge of imposture
from the youthful claimant. In the same year he issued a little book
called _Dorando_, containing a history of the Douglas cause in the guise
of a Spanish tale, and bringing the story to a conclusion by the triumph
of Archibald Douglas in the law courts. Editors who published extracts
while the case was still _sub judice_ were censured severely by the
court of session; but though his identity was notorious the author
himself escaped censure. In the spring of 1768 Boswell published through
the Foulis brothers of Glasgow his _Account of Corsica, Journal of a
Tour to that Island, and Memoirs of Pascal Paoli_. The liveliness of
personal impression which he managed to communicate to all his books
gained for this one a deserved success, and the _Tour_ was promptly
translated into French, German, Italian and Dutch. Walpole and others,
jeered, but Boswell was talked about everywhere, as Paoli Boswell or
Paoli's Englishman, and to aid the mob in the task of identifying him at
the Shakespeare jubilee of 1769 he took the trouble to insert a placard
in his hat bearing the legend "Corsica Boswell." The amazing costume of
"a Corsican chief" which he wore on this occasion was described at
length in the magazines.
On the 25th of November 1769, after a short tour in Ireland undertaken
to empty his head of Corsica (Johnson's emphatic direction), Boswell
married his cousin Margaret Montgomery at Lainshaw in Ayrshire. For some
years henceforth his visits to London were brief, but on the 30th of
April 1773 he was present at his admission to the Literary Club, for
which honour he had been proposed by Johnson himself, and in the autumn
of this year in the course of his tour to the Hebrides Johnson visited
the Boswells in Ayrshire. Neither Boswell's father nor his wife shared
his enthusiasm for the lexicographer. Lord Auchinleck remarked that
Jamie was "gane clean gyte ... And whose tail do ye think he has pinned
himself to now, man? A dominie, an auld dominie, that keepit a schule
and ca'd it an academy!" Housewives less prim than Mrs Boswell might
have objected to Johnson's habit of turning lighted candles upside down
when in the parlour to make them burn better. She called the great man a
bear. Boswell's _Journal of a Tour in the Hebrides_ was written for the
most part during the journey, but was not published until the spring of
1786. The diary of Pepys was not then known to the public, and Boswell's
indiscretions as to the emotions aroused in him by the neat ladies'
maids at Inveraray, and the extremity of drunkenness which he exhibited
at Corrichatachin, created a literary sensation and sent the _Tour_
through three editions in one year. In the meantime his pecuniary and
other difficulties at home were great; he made hardly more than L100 a
year by his profession, and his relations with his father were
chronically strained. In 1775 he began to keep terms at the Inner Temple
and managed to see a good deal of Johnson, between whom and John Wilkes
he succeeded in bringing about a meeting at the famous dinner at Dilly's
on the 15th of May 1776. On the 30th of August 1782 his father died,
leaving him an estate worth L1600 a year. On the 30th of June 1784,
Boswell met Johnson for the last time at a dinner at Sir Joshua
Reynolds's. He accompanied him back in the coach from Leicester Square
to Bolt Court. "We bade adieu to each other affectionately in the
carriage. When he had got down upon the foot pavement he called out
'Fare you well'; and without looking back, sprung away with a kind of
pathetic briskness, if I may use that expression, which seemed to
indicate a struggle to conceal uneasiness, and impressed me with a
foreboding of our long, long separation." Johnson died that year, and
two years later the Boswells moved to London. In 1789 Mrs Boswell died,
leaving five children. She had been an excellent mother and a good wife,
despite the infidelities and drunkenness of her husband, and from her
death Boswell relapsed into worse excesses, grievously aggravated by
hypochondria. He died of a complication of disorders at his house in
Great Poland Street on the 19th of May 1795, and was buried a fortnight
later at Auchinleck.
Up to the eve of his last illness Boswell had been busy upon his magnum
opus, _The Life of Samuel Johnson_, which was in process of
crystallization to the last. The first edition was published in two
quarto volumes in an edition of 1700 copies on the 16th of May 1791. He
was preparing a third edition when he died; this was completed by his
friend Edmund Malone, who brought out a fifth edition in 1807. That of
James Boswell junior (the editor of Malone's _Variorum Shakespeare_,
1821) appeared in 1811.
The _Life of Johnson_ was written on a scale practically unknown to
biographers before Boswell. It is a full-length with all the blotches
and pimples revealed ("I will not make my tiger a cat to please
anybody," wrote "Bozzy"). It may be overmuch an exhibition of oddities,
but it is also, be it remembered, a pioneer application of the
experimental method to the determination of human character. Its size
and lack of divisions (to divide it into chapters was an original device
of Croker's) are a drawback, and have prevented Boswell's _Life_ from
that assured triumph abroad which has fallen to the lot of various
English classics such as _Robinson Crusoe_ or _Gulliver's Travels_. But
wherever English is spoken, it has become a veritable sacred book and
has pervaded English life and thought in the same way, that the Bible,
Shakespeare and Bunyan have done. Boswell has successfully (to use his
own phrase) "Johnsonized" Britain, but has not yet Johnsonized the
planet. The model originally proposed to himself by Boswell was Mason's
_Life of Gray_, but he far surpassed that, or indeed any other, model.
The fashion that Boswell adopted of giving the conversations not in the
neutral tints of _oratio obliqua_ but in full _oratio recta_ was a
stroke of genius. But he is far from being the mere mechanical
transmitter of good things. He is a dramatic and descriptive artist of
the first order. The extraordinary vitality of his figures postulates a
certain admixture of fiction, and it is certain that Boswell exaggerates
the sympathy expressed in word or deed by Johnson for some of his own
tenderer foibles. But, on the whole, the best judges are of opinion that
Boswell's accuracy is exceptional, as it is undoubtedly seconded by a
power of observation of a singular retentiveness and intensity. The
difficulty of dramatic description can only be realized, as Jowett well
pointed out, by those who have attempted it, and it is not until we
compare Boswell's reports with those of less skilful hearers that we can
appreciate the skill with which the essence of a conversation is
extracted, and the whole scene indicated by a few telling touches. The
result is that Johnson, not, it is true, in the early days of his
poverty, total idleness and the pride of literature, but in the fulness
of fame and competence of fortune from 1763 to 1784, is better known to
us than any other man in history. The old theory to explain such a
marvel (originally propounded by Gray when the _Tour in Corsica_
appeared) that "any fool may write a valuable book by chance" is now
regarded as untenable. If fool is a word to describe Boswell (and his
folly was at times transcendent) he wrote his great book because and not
in despite of the fact that he was one. There can be no doubt, in fact,
that he was a biographical genius, and that he arranged his
opportunities just as he prepared his transitions and introduced those
inimitable glosses by which Johnson's motives are explained, his state
of mind upon particular occasions indicated, and the general feeling of
his company conveyed. This remarkable literary faculty, however, was but
a fraction of the total make-up requisite to produce such a masterpiece
as the _Life_. There is a touch of genius, too, in the naif and
imperturbable good nature and persistency ("Sir, I will not be baited
with 'what' and 'why.' 'Why is a cow's tail long?' 'Why is a fox's tail
bushy?'"), and even in the abnegation of all personal dignity, with
which Boswell pursued his hero. As he himself said of Goldsmith, "He had
sagacity enough to cultivate assiduously the acquaintance of Johnson,
and his faculties were gradually enlarged." Character, the vital
principle of the individual, is the _ignis fatuus_ of the mechanical
biographer. Its attainment may be secured by a variety of means--witness
Xenophon, Cellini, Aubrey, Lockhart and Froude--but it has never been
attained with such complete intensity as by Boswell in his _Life of
Johnson_. The more we study Boswell, the more we compare him with other
biographers, the greater his work appears.
The eleventh edition of Boswell's _Johnson_ was brought out by John
Wilson Croker in 1831; in this the original text is expanded by
numerous letters and variorum anecdotes and is already knee-deep in
annotation. Its blunders provoked the celebrated and mutually
corrective criticisms of Macaulay and Carlyle. Its value as an
unrivalled granary of Johnsoniana, stored opportunely before the last
links with a Johnsonian age had disappeared, has not been adequately
recognized. A new edition of the original text was issued in 1874 by
Percy Fitzgerald (who has also written a useful life of James Boswell
in 2 vols., London, 1891); a six-volume edition, including the _Tour_
and Johnsoniana, was published by the Rev. Alexander Napier in 1884;
the definitive edition is that by Dr Birkbeck Hill in 6 vols., 1887,
with copious annotations and a model index. A generously illustrated
edition was completed in 1907 in two large volumes by Roger Ingpen,
and reprints of value have also been edited by R. Carruthers (with
woodcuts), A. Birrell, Mowbray Morris (Globe edition) and Austin
Dobson. A short biography of Boswell was written in 1896 by W. Keith
Leask. Boswell's commonplace-book was published in 1876, under the
title of _Boswelliana_, with a memoir by the Rev. C. Rogers.
(T. Se.)
BOSWORTH, JOSEPH (1789-1876), British Anglo-Saxon scholar, was born in
Derbyshire in 1789. Educated at Repton, whence he proceeded to Aberdeen
University, he became in 1817 vicar of Little Horwood, Buckinghamshire,
and devoted his spare time to literature and particularly to the study
of Anglo-Saxon. In 1823 appeared his _Elements of Anglo-Saxon Grammar_.
In 1829 Bosworth went to Holland as chaplain, first at Amsterdam and
then at Rotterdam. He remained in Holland until 1840, working there on
his _Dictionary of the Anglo-Saxon Language_ (1838), his best-known
work. In 1857 he became rector of Water Shelford, Buckinghamshire, and
in the following year was appointed Rawlinson professor of Anglo-Saxon
at Oxford. He gave to the university of Cambridge in 1867 L10,000 for
the establishment of a professorship of Anglo-Saxon. He died on the
27th of May 1876, leaving behind him a mass of annotations on the
Anglo-Saxon charters.
BOTANY (from Gr. [Greek: botanae], plant; [Greek: bodkein], to graze),
the science which includes everything relating to the vegetable kingdom,
whether in a living or in a fossil state. It embraces a consideration of
the external forms of plants--of their anatomical structure, however
minute--of the functions which they perform --of their arrangement and
classification--of their distribution over the globe at the present and
at former epochs--and of the uses to which they are subservient. It
examines the plant in its earliest state of development, and follows it
through all its stages of progress until it attains maturity. It takes a
comprehensive view of all the plants which cover the earth, from the
minutest organism, only visible by the aid of the microscope, to the
most gigantic productions of the tropics. It marks the relations which
subsist between all members of the plant world, including those between
existing groups and those which are known only from their fossilized
remains preserved in the rocks. We deal here with the history and
evolution of the science.
The plants which adorn the globe more or less in all countries must
necessarily have attracted the attention of mankind from the earliest
times. The science that treats of them dates back to the days of
Solomon, who "spake of trees, from the cedar of Lebanon to the hyssop on
the wall." The Chaldaeans, Egyptians and Greeks were the early
cultivators of science, and botany was not neglected, although the study
of it was mixed up with crude speculations as to vegetable life, and as
to the change of plants into animals. About 300 years before Christ
Theophrastus wrote a _History of Plants_, and described about 500
species used for the treatment of diseases. Dioscorides, a Greek writer,
who appears to have flourished about the time of Nero, issued a work on
Materia Medica. The elder Pliny described about a thousand plants, many
of them famous for their medicinal virtues. Asiatic and Arabian writers
also took up this subject. Little, however, was done in the science of
botany, properly so called, until the 16th century of the Christian era,
when the revival of learning dispelled the darkness which had long hung
over Europe. Otto Brunfels, a physician of Bern, has been looked upon as
the restorer of the science in Europe. In his _Herbarium_, printed at
Strassburg (1530-1536), he gave descriptions of a large number of
plants, chiefly those of central Europe, illustrated by beautiful
woodcuts. He was followed by other writers,--Leonhard Fuchs, whose
_Historia Stirpium_ (Basel, 1542) is worthy of special note for its
excellent woodcuts; Hieronymus Bock, whose _Kreutter Buch_ appeared in
1539; and William Turner, "The Father of English Botany," the first part
of whose _New Herbal_, printed in English, was issued in 1551. The
descriptions in these early works were encumbered with much medicinal
detail, including speculations as to the virtues of plants. Plants which
were strikingly alike were placed together, but there was at first
little attempt at systematic classification. A crude system, based on
the external appearance of plants and their uses to man, was gradually
evolved, and is well illustrated in the _Herbal_, issued in 1597 by John
Gerard (1545-1612), a barber-surgeon, who had a garden in Holborn, and
was a keen student of British plants.
One of the earliest attempts at a methodical arrangement of plants was
made in Florence by Andreas Caesalpinus (1519-1603), who is called by
Linnaeus _primus verus systematicus_. In his work _De Plantis_,
published at Florence in 1583, he distributed the 1520 plants then known
into fifteen classes, the distinguishing characters being taken from the
fruit.
John Ray (1627-1705) did much to advance the science of botany, and was
also a good zoologist. He promulgated a system which may be considered
as the dawn of the "natural system" of the present day (Ray, _Methodus
Plantarum_, 1682). He separated flowering from flowerless plants, and
divided the former into Dicotyledons and Monocotyledons. His orders (or
"classes") were founded to some extent on a correct idea of the
affinities of plants, and he far outstripped his contemporaries in his
enlightened views of arrangement.
About the year 1670 Dr Robert Morison[1] (1620-1683), the first
professor of botany at Oxford, published a systematic arrangement of
plants, largely on the lines previously suggested by Caesalpinus. He
divided them into eighteen classes, distinguishing plants according as
they were woody or herbaceous, and taking into account the nature of the
flowers and fruit. In 1690 Rivinus[2] promulgated a classification
founded chiefly on the forms of the flowers. J.P. de Tournefort[3]
(1656-1708), who about the same time took up the subject of vegetable
taxonomy, was long at the head of the French school of botany, and
published a systematic arrangement in 1694-1700. He described about 8000
species of plants, and distributed them into twenty-two classes, chiefly
according to the form of the corolla, distinguishing herbs and
under-shrubs on the one hand from trees and shrubs on the other. The
system of Tournefort was for a long time adopted on the continent, but
was ultimately displaced by that of Carl von Linne, or Linnaeus (q.v.;
1707-1778).
The system of Linnaeus was founded on characters derived from the
stamens and pistils, the so-called sexual organs of the flower, and
hence it is often called the sexual system. It is an artificial method,
because it takes into account only a few marked characters in plants,
and does not propose to unite them by natural affinities. It is an index
to a department of the book of nature, and as such is useful to the
student. It does not aspire to any higher character, and although it
cannot be looked upon as a scientific and natural arrangement, still it
has a certain facility of application which at once commended it. It
does not of itself give the student a view of the true relations of
plants, and by leading to the discovery of the name of a plant, it is
only a stepping-stone to the natural system. Linnaeus himself claimed
nothing higher for it. He says--"Methodi Naturalis fragmenta studiose
inquirenda sunt. Primum et ultimum hoc in botanicis desideratum est.
Natura non facit saltus. Plantae omnes utrinque affinitatem monstrant,
uti territorium in mappa geographica." Accordingly, besides his
artificial index, he also promulgated fragments of a natural method of
arrangement.
The Linnean system was strongly supported by Sir James Edward Smith
(1759-1828), who adopted it in his _English Flora_, and who also became
possessor of the Linnean collection. The system was for a long time the
only one taught in the schools of Britain, even after it had been
discarded by those in France and in other continental countries.
The foundation of botanic gardens during the 16th and 17th centuries did
much in the way of advancing botany. They were at first appropriated
chiefly to the cultivation of medicinal plants. This was especially the
case at universities, where medical schools existed. The first botanic
garden was established at Padua in 1545, and was followed by that of
Pisa. The garden at Leiden dates from 1577, that at Leipzig from 1579.
Gardens also early existed at Florence and Bologna. The Montpellier
garden was founded in 1592, that of Giessen in 1605, of Strassburg in
1620, of Altdorf in 1625, and of Jena in 1629. The Jardin des Plantes at
Paris was established in 1626, and the Upsala garden in 1627. The
botanic garden at Oxford was founded in 1632. The garden at Edinburgh
was founded by Sir Andrew Balfour and Sir Robert Sibbald in 1670, and,
under the name of the Physic Garden, was placed under the
superintendence of James Sutherland, afterwards professor of botany in
the university. The garden at Kew dates from about 1730, when Frederick,
prince of Wales, obtained a long lease of Kew House and its gardens from
the Capel family. After his death in 1751 his widow, Princess Augusta of
Saxe-Gotha, showed great interest in their scientific development, and
in 1759 engaged William Aiton to establish a Physic Garden. The garden
of the Royal Dublin Society at Glasnevin was opened about 1796; that of
Trinity College, Dublin, in 1807; and that of Glasgow in 1818. The
Madrid garden dates from 1763, and that of Coimbra from 1773. Jean
Gesner (1709-1790), a Swiss physician and botanist, states that at the
end of the 18th century there were 1600 botanic gardens in Europe.
A new era dawned on botanical classification with the work of Antoine
Laurent de Jussieu (1748-1836). His uncle, Bernard de Jussieu, had
adopted the principles of Linnaeus's _Fragmenta_ in his arrangement of
the plants in the royal garden at the Trianon. At an early age Antoine
became botanical demonstrator in the Jardin des Plantes, and was thus
led to devote his time to the science of botany. Being called upon to
arrange the plants in the garden, he necessarily had to consider the
best method of doing so, and, following the lines already suggested by
his uncle, adopted a system founded in a certain degree on that of Ray,
in which he embraced all the discoveries in organography, adopted the
simplicity of the Linnean definitions, and displayed the natural
affinities of plants. His _Genera Plantarum_, begun in 1778, and finally
published in 1789, was an important advance, and formed the basis of all
natural classifications. One of the early supporters of this natural
method was Augustin Pyramus de Candolle (1778-1841), who in 1813
published his _Theorie elementaire de la botanique_, in which he showed
that the affinities of plants are to be sought by the comparative study
of the form and development of organs (morphology), not of their
functions (physiology). His _Prodromus Systematis Naturalis Regni
Vegetabilis_ was intended to embrace an arrangement and description of
all known plants. The work was continued after his death, by his son
Alphonse de Candolle, with the aid of other eminent botanists, and
embraces descriptions of the genera and species of the orders of
Dicotyledonous plants. The system followed by de Candolle is a
modification of that of Jussieu.
In arranging plants according to a natural method, we require to have a
thorough knowledge of structural and morphological botany, and hence we
find that the advances made in these departments have materially aided
the efforts of systematic botanists.
Robert Brown (1773-1858) was the first British botanist to support and
advocate the natural system of classification. The publication of his
_Prodromus Florae Novae Hollandiae_ (in 1810), according to the natural
method, led the way to the adoption of that method in the universities
and schools of Britain. In 1827 Brown announced his important discovery
of the distinction between Angiosperms and Gymnosperms, and the
philosophical character of his work led A. von Humboldt to refer to him
as "Botanicorum facile princeps." In 1830 John Lindley published the
first edition of his _Introduction to the Natural System_, embodying a
slight modification of de Candolle's system. From the year 1832 up to
1859 great advances were made in systematic botany, both in Britain and
on the continent of Europe. The _Enchiridion_ and _Genera Plantarum_ of
S.L. Endlicher (1804-1849), the _Prodromus_ of de Candolle, and the
_Vegetable Kingdom_ (1846) of J. Lindley became the guides in systematic
botany, according to the natural system.
The least satisfactory part of all these systems was that concerned with
the lower plants or Cryptogams as contrasted with the higher or
flowering plants (Phanerogams). The development of the compound
microscope rendered possible the accurate study of their life-histories;
and the publication in 1851 of the results of Wilhelm Hofmeister's
researches on the comparative embryology of the higher Cryptogamia shed
a flood of light on their relationships to each other and to the higher
plants, and supplied the basis for the distinction of the great groups
Thallophyta, Bryophyta, Pteridophyta and Phanerogamae, the last named
including Gymnospermae and Angiospermae.
A system of classification for the Phanerogams, or, as they are
frequently now called, Spermatophyta (seed-plants), which has been much
used in Great Britain and in America, is that of Bentham and Hooker,
whose _Genera Plantarum_ (1862-1883) is a descriptive account of all the
genera of flowering plants, based on their careful examination. The
arrangement is a modification of that adopted by the de Candolles.
Another system differing somewhat in detail is that of A.W. Eichler
(Berlin, 1883), a modified form of which was elaborated by Dr Adolf
Engler of Berlin, the principal editor of _Die natrurliche
Pflanzenfamilien_.
The study of the anatomy and physiology of plants did not keep pace with
the advance in classification. Nehemiah Grew and his contemporary
Marcello Malpighi were the earliest discoverers in the department of
plant anatomy. Both authors laid an account of the results of their
study of plant structure before the Royal Society of London almost at
the same time in 1671. Malpighi's complete work, _Anatome Plantarum_,
appeared in 1675 and Grew's _Anatomy of Plants_ in 1682. For more than a
hundred years the study of internal structure was neglected. In 1802
appeared the _Traite d'anatomie et de physiologie vegetale_ of C.F.B. de
Mirbel (1776-1854), which was quickly followed by other publications by
Kurt Sprengel, L.C. Treviranus (1779-1864), and others. In 1812 J.J.
P. Moldenhawer isolated cells by maceration of tissues in water. The
work of F.J.F. Meyen and H. von Mohl in the middle of the 19th century
placed the study of plant anatomy on a more scientific basis. Reference
must also be made to M.J. Schleiden (1804-1881) and F. Unger
(1800-1870), while in K.W. von Nageli's investigations on molecular
structure and the growth of the cell membrane we recognize the origin of
modern methods of the study of cell-structure included under cytology
(q.v.). The work of Karl Sanio and Th. Hartig advanced knowledge on the
structure and development of tissues, while A. de Bary's _Comparative
Anatomy of the Phanerogams and Ferns_ (1877) supplied an admirable
presentation of the facts so far known. Since then the work has been
carried on by Ph. van Tieghem and his pupils, and others, who have
sought to correlate the large mass of facts and to find some general
underlying principles (see PLANTS: _Anatomy of_).
The subject of fertilization was one which early excited attention. The
idea of the existence of separate sexes in plants was entertained in
early times, long before separate male and female organs had been
demonstrated. The production of dates in Egypt, by bringing two kinds of
flowers into contact, proves that in very remote periods some notions
were entertained on the subject. Female date-palms only were cultivated,
and wild ones were brought from the desert in order to fertilize them.
Herodotus informs us that the Babylonians knew of old that there were
male and female date-trees, and that the female required the concurrence
of the male to become fertile. This fact was also known to the
Egyptians, the Phoenicians and other nations of Asia and Africa. The
Babylonians suspended male clusters from wild dates over the females;
but they seem to have supposed that the fertility thus produced depended
on the presence of small flies among the wild flowers, which, by
entering the female flowers, caused them to set and ripen. The process
was called palmification. Theophrastus, who succeeded Aristotle in his
school in the 114th Olympiad, frequently mentions the sexes of plants,
but he does not appear to have determined the organs of reproduction.
Pliny, who flourished under Vespasian, speaks particularly of a male and
female palm, but his statements were not founded on any real knowledge
of the organs. From Theophrastus down to Caesalpinus, who died at Rome
in 1603, there does not appear to have been any attention paid to the
reproductive organs of plants. Caesalpinus had his attention directed to
the subject, and he speaks of a halitus or emanation from the male
plants causing fertility in the female.
Nehemiah Grew seems to have been the first to describe, in a paper on
the _Anatomy of Plants_, read before the Royal Society in November 1676,
the functions of the stamens and pistils. Up to this period all was
vague conjecture. Grew speaks of the _attire_, or the stamens, as being
the male parts, and refers to conversations with Sir Thomas Millington,
Sedleian professor at Oxford, to whom the credit of the sexual theory
seems really to belong. Grew says that "when the attire or apices break
or open, the globules or dust falls down on the seedcase or uterus, and
touches it with a prolific virtue." Ray adopted Grew's views, and states
various arguments to prove their correctness in the preface to his work
on European plants, published in 1694. In 1694 R.J. Camerarius,
professor of botany and medicine at Tubingen, published a letter on the
sexes of plants, in which he refers to the stamens and pistils as the
organs of reproduction, and states the difficulties he had encountered
in determining the organs of Cryptogamic plants. In 1703 Samuel Morland,
in a paper read before the Royal Society, stated that the farina
(pollen) is a congeries of seminal plants, one of which must be conveyed
into every ovum or seed before it can become prolific. In this
remarkable statement he seems to anticipate in part the discoveries
afterwards made as to pollen tubes, and more particularly the peculiar
views promulgated by Schleiden. In 1711 E.F. Geoffrey, in a memoir
presented to the Royal Academy at Paris, supported the views of Grew and
others as to the sexes of plants. He states that the germ is never to be
seen in the seed till the apices (anthers) shed their dust; and that if
the stamina be cut out before the apices open, the seed will either not
ripen, or be barren if it ripens. He mentions two experiments made by
him to prove this--one by cutting off the staminal flowers in Maize, and
the other by rearing the female plant of Mercurialis apart from the
male. In these instances most of the flowers were abortive, but a few
were fertile, which he attributes to the dust of the apices having been
wafted by the wind from other plants.
Linnaeus took up the subject in the inauguration of his sexual system.
He first published his views in 1736, and he thus writes--"Antheras et
stigmata constituere sexum plantarum, a palmicolis, Millingtono, Grewio,
Rayo, Camerario, Godofredo, Morlando, Vaillantio, Blairio, Jussievio,
Bradleyo, Royeno, Logano, &c., detectum, descriptum, et pro infallibili
assumptum; nec ullum, apertis oculis considerantem cujuscunque plantae
flores, latere potest." He divided plants into sexual and asexual, the
former being Phanerogamous or flowering, and the latter Cryptogamous or
flowerless. In the latter division of plants he could not detect stamens
and pistils, and he did not investigate the mode in which their germs
were produced. He was no physiologist, and did not promulgate any views
as to the embryogenic process. His followers were chiefly engaged in the
arrangement and classification of plants, and while descriptive botany
made great advances the physiological department of the science was
neglected. His views were not, however, adopted at once by all, for we
find Charles Alston stating arguments against them in his _Dissertation
on the Sexes of Plants_. Alston's observations were founded on what
occurred in certain unisexual plants, such as Mercurialis, Spinach,
Hemp, Hop and Bryony. The conclusion at which he arrives is that the
pollen is not in all flowering plants necessary for impregnation, for
fertile seeds can be produced without its influence. He supports
parthenogenesis in some plants. Soon after the promulgation of
Linnaeus's method of classification, the attention of botanists was
directed to the study of Cryptogamic plants, and the valuable work of
Johann Hedwig (1730-1799) on the reproductive organs of mosses made its
appearance in 1782. He was one of the first to point out the existence
of certain cellular bodies in these plants which appeared to perform the
functions of reproductive organs, and to them the names of antheridia
and pistillidia were given. This opened up a new field of research, and
led the way in the study of Cryptogamic reproduction, which has since
been much advanced by the labours of numerous botanical inquiries. The
interesting observations of Morland, already quoted, seem to have been
neglected, and no one attempted to follow in the path which he had
pointed out. Botanists were for a long time content to know that the
scattering of the pollen from the anther, and its application to the
stigma, were necessary for the production of perfect seed, but the
stages of the process of fertilization remained unexplored. The matter
seemed involved in mystery, and no one attempted to raise the veil which
hung over the subject of embryogeny. The general view was, that the
embryo originated in the ovule, which was in some obscure manner
fertilized by the pollen.
In 1815 L.C. Treviranus, professor of botany in Bonn, roused the
attention of botanists to the development of the embryo, but although he
made valuable researches, he did not add much in the way of new
information. In 1823 G.B. Amici discovered the existence of pollen
tubes, and he was followed by A.T. Brongniart and R. Brown. The latter
traced the tubes as far as the nucleus of the ovule. These important
discoveries mark a new epoch in embryology, and may be said to be the
foundation of the views now entertained, which were materially aided by
the subsequent elucidation of the process of cytogenesis, or
cell-development, by Schleiden, Schwann, Mohl and others. The whole
subject of fertilization and development of the embryo has been more
recently investigated with great assiduity and zeal, as regards both
cryptogamous and phanerogamous plants, and details must be sought in the
various special articles. The observations of Darwin as to the
fertilization of orchids, _Primula, Linum_ and _Lythrum_, and other
plants, and the part which insects take in this function, gave an
explanation of the observations of Christian Konrad Sprengel, made at
the close of the 18th century, and opened up a new phase in the study of
botany, which has been followed by Hermann Muller, Federico Delpino and
others, and more recently by Paul Knuth.
One of the earliest workers at plant physiology was Stephen Hales. In
his _Statical Essays_ (1727) he gave an account of numerous experiments
and observations which he had made on the nutrition of plants and the
movement of sap in them. He showed that the gaseous constituents of the
air contribute largely to the nourishment of plants, and that the leaves
are the organs which elaborate the food; the importance of leaves in
nutrition had been previously pointed out by Malpighi in a short account
of nutrition which forms an appendix to his anatomical work. The birth
of modern chemistry in the work of J. Priestley and Lavoisier, at the
close of the 18th century, made possible the scientific study of
plant-nutrition, though Jan Ingenhousz in 1779 discovered that plants
incessantly give out carbonic acid gas, but that the green leaves and
shoots only exhale oxygen in sunlight or clear daylight, thereby
indicating the distinction between assimilation of carbonic acid gas
(photosynthesis) and respiration. N.T. de Saussure (1767-1845) gave
precision to the science of plant-nutrition by use of quantitative
methods. The subjects of plant nutrition and respiration were further
studied by R.J.H. Dutrochet towards the middle of the century, and
Liebig's application of chemistry to agriculture and physiology put
beyond question the parts played by the atmosphere and the soil in the
nutrition of plants.
The phenomena of movements of the organs of plants attracted the
attention of John Ray (1693), who ascribed the movements of the leaf of
Mimosa and others to alteration in temperature. Linnaeus also studied
the periodical movements of flowers and leaves, and referred to the
assumption of the night-position as the sleep-movement. Early in the
19th century Andrew Knight showed by experiment that the vertical growth
of stems and roots is due to the influence of gravitation, and made
other observations on the relation between the position assumed by plant
organs and external directive forces, and later Dutrochet, H. von Mohl
and others contributed to the advance of this phase of plant physiology.
Darwin's experiments in reference to the movements of climbing and
twining plants, and of leaves in insectivorous plants, have opened up a
wide field of inquiry as to the relation between plants and the various
external factors, which has attracted numerous workers. By the work of
Julius Sachs and his pupils plant physiology was established on a
scientific basis, and became an important part of the study of plants,
for the development of which reference may be made to the article
PLANTS: _Physiology_. The study of form and development has advanced
under the name "morphology," with the progress of which are associated
the names of K. Goebel, E. Strasburger, A. de Bary and others, while
more recently, as cytology (q.v.), the intimate study of the cell and
its contents has attracted considerable attention.
The department of geographical botany made rapid advance by means of the
various scientific expeditions which have been sent to all quarters of
the globe, as well as by individual effort (see PLANTS: _Distribution_)
since the time of A. von Humboldt. The question of the mode in which the
floras of islands and of continents have been formed gave rise to
important speculations by such eminent botanical travellers as Charles
Darwin, Sir J.D. Hooker, A.R. Wallace and others. The connexion
between climate and vegetation has also been studied. Quite recently
under the name of "Ecology" or "Oecology" the study of plants in
relation to each other and to their environment has become the subject
of systematic investigation.
The subject of palaeontological botany (see PALAEOBOTANY) has been
advanced by the researches of both botanists and geologists. The nature
of the climate at different epochs of the earth's history has also been
determined from the character of the flora. The works of A.T.
Brongniart, H.R. Goeppert and W.P. Schimper advanced this department of
science. Among others who contributed valuable papers on the subject may
be noticed Oswald Heer (1809-1883), who made observations on the Miocene
flora, especially in Arctic regions; Gaston de Saporta (1823-1895), who
examined the Tertiary flora; Sir J.W. Dawson and Leo Lesquereux, and
others who reported on the Canadian and American fossil plants. In Great
Britain also W.C. Williamson, by his study of the structure of the
plants of the coal-measures, opened up a new line of research which has
been followed by Bertrand Renault, D.H. Scott, A.C. Seward and others,
and has led to important discoveries on the nature of extinct groups of
plants and also on the phylogeny of existing groups.