Transcriber’s Notes
Obvious typographical errors have been silently corrected. Variations
in hyphenation and accents have been standardised but all other spelling and
punctuation remains unchanged.
The Errata have been implemented.
Italics are represented thus _italic_, and bold thus =bold= .
HISTORY OF BOTANY
_SACHS_
London
HENRY FROWDE
[Illustration: Shield]
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS WAREHOUSE
AMEN CORNER, E.C.
HISTORY OF BOTANY
(1530-1860)
BY
JULIUS VON SACHS
PROFESSOR OF BOTANY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF WÜRZBURG
_AUTHORISED TRANSLATION_
BY
HENRY E. F. GARNSEY, M.A.
_Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford_
REVISED BY
ISAAC BAYLEY BALFOUR, M.A., M.D., F.R.S.
_Professor of Botany in the University
And Keeper of the Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh_
=Oxford=
AT THE CLARENDON PRESS
1890
[_All rights reserved_]
=Oxford=
PRINTED AT THE CLARENDON PRESS
BY HORACE HART, PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY
PREFACE.
Botanical Science is made up of three distinct branches of knowledge,
Classification founded on Morphology, Phytotomy, and Vegetable
Physiology. All these strive towards a common end, a perfect
understanding of the vegetable kingdom, but they differ entirely from
one another in their methods of research, and therefore presuppose
essentially different intellectual endowments. That this is the case
is abundantly shown by the history of the science, from which we learn
that up to quite recent times morphology and classification have
developed in almost entire independence of the other two branches.
Phytotomy has indeed always maintained a certain connection with
physiology, but where principles peculiar to each of them, fundamental
questions, had to be dealt with, there they also went their way in
almost entire independence of one another. It is only in the present
day that a deeper conception of the problems of vegetable life has led
to a closer union between the three. I have sought to do justice to
this historical fact by treating the parts of my subject separately;
but in this case, if the present work was to be kept within suitable
limits, it became necessary to devote a strictly limited space only
to each of the three historical delineations. It is obvious that the
weightiest and most important matter only could find a place in so
narrow a frame, but this I do not exactly regard as a misfortune,
and in the interests of the reader it is rather an advantage; for, in
accordance with the objects of the ‘General History of the Sciences,’
this History of Botany is not intended for professional persons only,
but for a wider circle of readers, and to these perhaps even the
details presented in it may here and there seem wearisome.
The style of the narrative might have been freer, and greater space
might have been allotted to reflections on the inner connection of
the whole subject, if I had had before me better preliminary studies
in the history of botany; but as things are, I have found myself
especially occupied in ascertaining questions of historical fact, in
distinguishing true merit from undeserved reputation, in searching
out the first beginnings of fruitful thoughts and observing their
development, and in more than one case in producing lengthy refutations
of wide-spread errors. These things could not be done within the
allotted space without a certain dryness of style and manner, and I
have often been obliged to content myself with passing allusions where
detailed explanation might have been desired.
As regards the choice of topics, I have given prominence to discoveries
of facts only when they could be shown to have promoted the development
of the science; on the other hand, I have made it my chief object to
discover the first dawning of scientific ideas and to follow them as
they developed into comprehensive theories, for in this lies, to my
mind, the true history of a science. But the task of the historian of
Botany, as thus conceived, is a very difficult one, for it is only with
great labour that he succeeds in picking the real thread of scientific
thought out of an incredible chaos of empirical material. It has
always been the chief hindrance to a more rapid advance in botany, that
the majority of writers simply collected facts, or if they attempted
to apply them to theoretical purposes, did so very imperfectly. I have
therefore singled out those men as the true heroes of our story who
not only established new facts, but gave birth to fruitful thoughts
and made a speculative use of empirical material. From this point of
view I have taken ideas only incidentally thrown out for nothing more
than they were originally; for scientific merit belongs only to the
man who clearly recognises the theoretical importance of an idea, and
endeavours to make use of it for the promotion of his science. For this
reason I ascribe little value, for instance, to certain utterances of
earlier writers, whom it is the fashion at present to put forward as
the first founders of the theory of descent; for it is an indubitable
fact that the theory of descent had no scientific value before the
appearance of Darwin’s book in 1859, and that it was Darwin who gave
it that value. Here, as in other cases, it appears to me only true
and just to abstain from assigning to earlier writers merits to which
probably, if they were alive, they would themselves lay no claim.
J. SACHS.
WÜRZBURG, _July 22, 1875_.
THE AUTHOR’S PREFACE
_To the English translation of the History of Botany of Julius von
Sachs._
I am gratefully sensible of the honourable distinction implied in
the determination of the Delegates of the Clarendon Press to have
my History of Botany translated into the world-wide language of the
British Empire. Fourteen years have elapsed since the first appearance
of the work in Germany, from fifteen to eighteen years since it
was composed,—a period of time usually long enough in our age of
rapid progress for a scientific work to become obsolete. But if the
preparation of an English translation shows that competent judges do
not regard the book as obsolete, I should be inclined to refer this to
two causes. First of all, no other work of a similar kind has appeared,
as far as I know, since 1875, so that mine may still be considered to
be, in spite of its age, the latest history of Botany; secondly, it
has been my endeavour to ascertain the historical facts by careful and
critical study of the older botanical literature in the original works,
at the cost indeed of some years of working-power and of considerable
detriment to my health, and facts never lose their value,—a truth which
England especially has always recognised.
But the present work is not a simple enumeration of the names of
botanists and of their writings, no mere list of the dates of botanical
discoveries and theories; such was not at all my plan when I designed
it. On the contrary I purposed to present to the reader a picture
of the way in which the first beginnings of scientific study of the
vegetable world in the sixteenth century made their appearance in
alliance with the culture prevailing at the time, and how gradually
by the intellectual efforts of gifted men, who at first did not even
bear the name of botanists, an ever deepening insight was obtained into
the relationship of all plants one to another, into their outer form
and inner organisation, and into the vital phenomena or physiological
processes dependent on these conditions.
For the attainment of this end it was above all things necessary for
me to form a clear judgment respecting the influence of the views
and principles enunciated by the different authors on the further
development of botanical science. This is to the historian of science
the central point round which all beside should be disposed, and
without which the entire work breaks up into a collection of unmeaning
details, and it is one which demands knowledge of the subject, and
capacity and impartiality of judgment. On questions connected with
times long gone by the decision of the experts has in most cases been
already given, though I myself found to my surprise that older authors
had for centuries been regarded as the founders of views which they
had distinctly repudiated as absurd, showing how necessary it is that
the works of our predecessors should from time to time be carefully
read and compared together. But in the majority of cases there is no
dispute at the present day respecting the historical value, that is the
operative influence on posterity, of works written three hundred or
even one hundred years ago.
But it is a very different matter when the author of a book like mine
ventures, as I have done for sufficient reasons but at the same time
with regret, to sit in judgment on the works of men of research and
experts, who belong to our own time and who exert a lively influence
on their generation. In this case the author can no longer appeal to
the consentient opinion of his contemporaries; he finds them divided
into parties, and involuntarily belongs to a party himself. But it is
a still more weighty consideration that he may subsequently change his
own point of view, and may arrive at a more profound insight into the
value of the works which he has criticised; continued study and maturer
years may teach him that he overestimated some things fifteen or twenty
years ago and perhaps undervalued others, and facts, once assumed to be
well established, may now be acknowledged to be incorrect.
Thus it has happened in my own case also in some but not in many
instances, in which I have had to express an opinion respecting the
character of works which appeared after 1860, and which to some extent
influenced my judgment on the years immediately preceding them. But
this was from fifteen to eighteen years ago when I was working at my
History. It might perhaps be expected that I should remove all such
expressions of opinion from the work before it is translated. In some
few cases, in which this could be effected by simply drawing the
pen through a few lines, I have so done; but it appeared to me that
to alter with anxious care every sentence which I should put into a
different form at the present day would serve no good purpose, for
I came to the conclusion that my book itself may be regarded as a
historical fact, and that the kindly and indulgent reader may even be
glad to know what one, who has lived wholly in the science and taken
an interest in everything in it old and new, thought from fifteen to
eighteen years ago of the then reigning theories, representing as he
did the view of the majority of his fellow-botanists.
However, these remarks relate only to two famous writers on the
subjects with which this History is concerned. If the work had been
brought to a close with the year 1850 instead of 1860, I should hardly
have found it necessary to give them so prominent a position in it.
Their names are Charles Darwin and Karl Nägeli. I would desire that
whoever reads what I have written on Charles Darwin in the present
work should consider that it contains a large infusion of youthful
enthusiasm still remaining from the year 1859, when the ‘Origin of
Species’ delivered us from the unlucky dogma of constancy. Darwin’s
later writings have not inspired me with the like feeling. So it
has been with regard to Nägeli. He, like Hugo von Mohl, was one
of the first among German botanists who introduced into the study
that strict method of thought which had long prevailed in physics,
chemistry, and astronomy; but the researches of the last ten or
twelve years have unfortunately shown that Nägeli’s method has been
applied to facts which, as facts, were inaccurately observed. Darwin
collected innumerable facts from the literature in support of an idea,
Nägeli applied his strict logic to observations which were in part
untrustworthy. The services which each of these men rendered to the
science are still acknowledged; but my estimate of their importance
for its advance would differ materially at the present moment from
that contained in my History of Botany. At the same time I rejoice in
being able to say that I may sometimes have overrated the merits of
distinguished men, but have never knowingly underestimated them.
DR. J. VON SACHS,
_Foreign Fellow of the Royal Society_.
WÜRZBURG, _March 24, 1889_.
NOTE BY THE TRANSLATOR.
No History of Botany in English has ever been published, and it is
to supply in some measure this want, long felt by English-speaking
students, that this translation of Professor Sachs’ masterly sketch has
been prepared.
H. E. F. G.
CONTENTS.
FIRST BOOK.
HISTORY OF MORPHOLOGY AND CLASSIFICATION.
1530-1860.
PAGE
Introduction 3
CHAPTER I.
The Botanists of Germany and the Netherlands from Brunfels to
Caspar Bauhin, 1530-1623 13
CHAPTER II.
Artificial Systems and Terminology of Organs from Cesalpino to
Linnaeus, 1583-1760 37
CHAPTER III.
Development of the Natural System under the Influence of the
Dogma of the Constancy of Species, 1759-1850 108
CHAPTER IV.
Morphology under the Influence of the Doctrine of Metamorphosis
and of the Spiral Theory, 1790-1850 155
CHAPTER V.
Morphology and Systematic Botany under the Influence of the
History of Development and the knowledge of the Cryptogams,
1840-1860 182
SECOND BOOK.
HISTORY OF VEGETABLE ANATOMY.
1671-1860.
Introduction 219
CHAPTER I.
Phytotomy founded by Malpighi and Grew, 1671-1682 229
CHAPTER II.
Phytotomy in the Eighteenth Century 246
CHAPTER III.
Examination of the Matured Framework of Cell-Membrane in Plants,
1800-1840 256
CHAPTER IV.
History of Development of the Cell, Formation of Tissues, Molecular
Structure of Organised Forms, 1840-1860 311
THIRD BOOK.
HISTORY OF VEGETABLE PHYSIOLOGY.
1583-1860.
Introduction 359
CHAPTER I.
History of the Sexual Theory
1. From Aristotle to R. J. Camerarius 376
2. Establishment of the Doctrine of Sexuality in Plants by R. J.
Camerarius, 1691-1694 385
3. Dissemination of the New Doctrine; its Adherents and
Opponents, 1700-1760 390
4. The Theory of Evolution and Epigenesis 402
5. Further Development of the Sexual Theory by J. G. Koelreuter
and Konrad Sprengel, 1761-1793 406
6. New opponents of Sexuality and their refutation by Experiments,
1785-1849 422
7. Microscopic Investigation into the Processes of Fertilisation
in the Phanerogams, the Pollen-Tube and Eggs, 1830-1850 431
8. Discovery of Sexuality in the Cryptogams, 1837-1860 436
CHAPTER II.
History of the Theory of Nutrition of Plants, 1583-1860 445
1. Cesalpino, 1583 450
2. First Inductive Experiments and Opening of New Points of
View in the History of the Theory of the Nutrition of
Plants, to 1730 453
3. Fruitless Attempts to Explain the Movement of the Sap in
Plants, 1730-1780 482
4. The Modern Theory of Nutrition Founded by Ingen-Houss
and Theodore de Saussure, 1779-1804 491
5. Vital Force. Respiration and Heat of Plants. Endosmose,
1804-1840 504
6. Settlement of the Question of Food-Material of Plants,
1840-1860 524
CHAPTER III.
History of Phytodynamics
From end of 17th century to about 1860 535
INDEX 565
ERRATA.
Page 18, line 3 from bottom, _for_ Chini _read_ Ghini
" 20, " 7, _for_ Schmiedel _read_ Schmidel
" 160, " 2 from bottom, _for_ many _read_ some
" 160, note, _for_ Robert _read_ Louis Marie Aubert
" 201, line 11, _for_ asexually _read_ sexually.
FIRST BOOK
HISTORY OF MORPHOLOGY AND CLASSIFICATION
(1530-1860)
INTRODUCTION.
The authors of the oldest herbals of the 16th century, Brunfels, Fuchs,
Bock, Mattioli and others, regarded plants mainly as the vehicles of
medicinal virtues; to them plants were the ingredients in compound
medicines, and were therefore by preference termed ‘simplicia,’ simple
constituents of medicaments. Their chief object was to discover the
plants employed by the physicians of antiquity, the knowledge of which
had been lost in later times. The corrupt texts of Theophrastus,
Dioscorides, Pliny and Galen had been in many respects improved and
illustrated by the critical labours of the Italian commentators of
the 15th and of the early part of the 16th century; but there was one
imperfection which no criticism could remove,—the highly unsatisfactory
descriptions of the old authors or the entire absence of descriptions.
It was moreover at first assumed that the plants described by the Greek
physicians must grow wild in Germany also, and generally in the rest
of Europe; each author identified a different native plant with some
one mentioned by Dioscorides or Theophrastus or others, and thus there
arose as early as the 16th century a confusion of nomenclature which it
was scarcely possible to clear away. As compared with the efforts of
the philological commentators, who knew little of plants from their own
observation, a great advance was made by the first German composers of
herbals, who went straight to nature, described the wild plants growing
around them and had figures of them carefully executed in wood. Thus
was made the first beginning of a really scientific examination of
plants, though the aims pursued were not yet truly scientific, for no
questions were proposed as to the nature of plants, their organisation
or mutual relations; the only point of interest was the knowledge of
individual forms and of their medicinal virtues.
The descriptions were at first extremely inartistic and unmethodical;
but the effort to make them as exact and clear as was possible led
from time to time to perceptions of truth, that came unsought and lay
far removed from the object originally in view. It was remarked that
many of the plants which Dioscorides had described in his Materia
Medica do not grow wild in Germany, France, Spain, and England, and
that conversely very many plants grow in these countries, which
were evidently unknown to the ancient writers; it became apparent
at the same time that many plants have points of resemblance to one
another, which have nothing to do with their medicinal powers or
with their importance to agriculture and the arts. In the effort to
promote the knowledge of plants for practical purposes by careful
description of individual forms, the impression forced itself on
the mind of the observer, that there are various natural groups of
plants which have a distinct resemblance to one another in form and
in other characteristics. It was seen that there were other natural
alliances in the vegetable world, beside the three great divisions
of trees, shrubs, and herbs adopted by Aristotle and Theophrastus.
The first perception of natural groups is to be found in Bock, and
later herbals show that the natural connection between such plants
as occur together in the groups of Fungi, Mosses, Ferns, Coniferae,
Umbelliferae, Compositae, Labiatae, Papilionaceae was distinctly felt,
though it was by no means clearly understood how this connection was
actually expressed; the fact of natural affinity presented itself
unsought as an incidental and indefinite impression, to which no great
value was at first attached. The recognition of these groups required
no antecedent philosophic reflection or conscious attempt to classify
the objects in the vegetable world; they present themselves to the
unprejudiced eye as naturally as do the groups of mammals, birds,
reptiles, fishes and worms in the animal kingdom. The real resemblance
of the organisms in such groups is unconsciously accepted by the mind
through the association of ideas, and it is not till this involuntary
mental act, which in itself requires no effort of the understanding, is
accomplished, that any necessity is felt for obtaining a clearer idea
of the phenomenon, and the sense of this necessity is the first step to
intentional systematic enquiry. The series of botanical works published
in Germany and the Netherlands from 1530 to 1623, from Brunfels to
Kaspar Bauhin, shows very plainly how this perception of a grouping by
affinity in the vegetable kingdom grew more and more distinct; but it
also shows how these men merely followed an instinctive feeling in the
matter, and made no enquiry into the cause of the relationship which
they perceived.
Nevertheless a great step in advance was thus taken; all the
foreign matter introduced into the description of plants by medical
superstition and practical considerations was seen to be of secondary
importance, and was indeed altogether thrown aside by Kaspar Bauhin;
the fact of natural affinity, the vivifying principle of all botanical
research, came to the front in its place, and awakened the desire to
distinguish more exactly whatever was different, and to bring together
more carefully all that was like in kind. Thus the idea of natural
affinity in plants is not a discovery of any single botanist, but is a
product, and to some extent an incidental product, of the practice of
describing plants.
But before the exhibition of the natural affinity gave birth to the
first efforts at classification on the part of de l’Obel (Lobelius)
and afterwards of Kaspar Bauhin, the Italian botanist Cesalpino (1583)
had already attempted a system of the vegetable kingdom on a very
different plan. He was led to distribute all vegetable forms into
definite groups not by the fact of natural affinity, which impressed
itself on the minds of the botanists of Germany and the Netherlands
through involuntary association of ideas, but by philosophical
reflection. Trained in the philosophy which flourished in Italy in
the 16th century, deeply imbued with the doctrines of Aristotle, and
practised in all subtleties of the schools, Cesalpino was not the
man to surrender himself quietly to the influence of nature on the
unconscious powers of the mind; on the contrary, he sought from the
first to bring all that he learnt from the writings of others and from
his own acute observation of the forms of plants into subjection to
his own understanding. Hence he approached the task of the scientific
botanist in an entirely different way from that of de l’Obel and Kaspar
Bauhin. It was by philosophical reflections on the nature of the plant
and on the substantial and accidental value of its parts, according to
Aristotelian conceptions, that he was led to distribute the vegetable
kingdom into groups and sub-groups founded on definite marks.
This difference in the origin of the systematic efforts of Cesalpino on
the one hand and of de l’Obel and Bauhin on the other is unmistakably
apparent; the Germans were instinctively led by the resemblances to
the conception of natural groups, Cesalpino on the contrary framed his
groups on the sharp distinctions which resulted from the application
of predetermined marks; all the faults in Bauhin’s system are due to
incorrect judgment of resemblances, those of Cesalpino to incorrectness
in distinguishing.
But the main point of difference lies in the fact, that the system
is presented by de l’Obel and Bauhin without any statement of the
principles on which it rests; in their account of it the association
of ideas is left to perfect itself in the mind of the reader, as it
grew up before in the authors themselves. De l’Obel and Bauhin are
like artists, who convey their own impressions to others not by words
and descriptions, but by pictorial representations; Cesalpino, on
the other hand, addresses himself at once to the understanding of
his reader and shows him on philosophic grounds that there must be a
classification, and states the principles of this classification; it
was on philosophic grounds also that he made the characters of the seed
and the fruit the basis of his arrangement, while the German botanists,
paying little attention to the organs of fructification, were chiefly
influenced by the general impression produced by the plant, by its
habit as the phrase now is.
The historians of botany have overlooked the real state of the case
as here presented, or have not described it with sufficient emphasis;
due attention has not been paid to the fact, that systematic botany,
as it began to develope in the 17th century, contained within itself
from the first two opposing elements; on the one hand the fact of
a natural affinity indistinctly felt, which was brought out by the
botanists of Germany and the Netherlands, and on the other the desire,
to which Cesalpino first gave expression, of arriving by the path of
clear perception at a classification of the vegetable kingdom which
should satisfy the understanding. These two elements of systematic
investigation were entirely incommensurable; it was not possible by
the use of arbitrary principles of classification which satisfied
the understanding to do justice at the same time to the instinctive
feeling for natural affinity which would not be argued away. This
incommensurability between natural affinity and _a priori_ grounds of
classification is everywhere expressed in the systems embracing the
whole vegetable kingdom, which were proposed up to 1736, and which
including those of Cesalpino and Linnaeus were not less in number than
fifteen. It is the custom to describe these systems, of which those
of Cesalpino, Morison, Ray, Bachmann (Rivinus), and Tournefort are
the most important, by the one word ‘artificial’[1]; but it was by no
means the intention of those men to propose classifications of the
vegetable kingdom which should be merely artificial, and do no more
than offer an arrangement adapted for ready reference. It is true that
the botanists of the 17th century and Linnaeus himself often spoke of
facility of use as a great object to be kept in view in constructing
a system; but every one who brought out a new system did so really
because he believed that his own was a better expression of natural
affinities than those of his predecessors. If some like Ray and Morison
were more influenced by the wish to exhibit natural affinities by
means of a system, and others as Tournefort and Magnol thought more
of framing a perspicuous and handy arrangement of plants, yet it is
plain from the objections which every succeeding systematist makes to
his predecessors, that the exhibition of natural affinities was more
or less clearly in the minds of all as the main object of the system;
only they all employed the same wrong means for securing this end, for
they fancied that natural affinities could be brought out by the use of
a few easily recognised marks, whose value for systematic purposes had
been arbitrarily determined. This opposition between means and end runs
through all systematic botany from Cesalpino in 1583 to Linnaeus in
1736.
But a new departure dates from Linnaeus himself, since he was the first
who clearly perceived the existence of this discord. He was the first
who said distinctly, that there is a natural system of plants, which
could not be established by the use of predetermined marks, as had
been previously attempted, and that even the rules for framing it were
still undiscovered. In his Fragments of the date of 1738, he gave a
list of sixty-five groups or orders, which he regarded provisionally
as cycles of natural affinity, but he did not venture to give their
characteristic marks. These groups, though better separated and more
naturally arranged than those of Kaspar Bauhin, were like his founded
solely on a refined feeling for the relative resemblances and graduated
differences that were observed in comparing plants with one another,
and this is no less true of the enumeration of natural families
attempted by Bernard de Jussieu in 1759. To such of these small
groups of related forms as had not been already named both Linnaeus
and Jussieu gave names, which they took not from certain marks, but
from the name of a genus in each group. But this mode of naming plainly
expresses the idea which from that time forward prevailed in systematic
botany, that there is a common type lying at the foundation of each
natural group, from which all its forms though specifically distinct
can be derived, as the forms of a crystal may all be derived from
one fundamental form,—an idea which was also expressed by Pyrame de
Candolle in 1819.
But botanists could not rest content with merely naming natural
groups; it was necessary to translate the indistinct feeling, which
had suggested the groups of Linnaeus and Bernard de Jussieu, into the
language of science by assigning clearly recognised marks; and this was
from this time forward the task of systematists from Antoine Laurent
de Jussieu and de Candolle to Endlicher and Lindley. But it cannot
be denied, that later systematists repeatedly committed the fault of
splitting up natural groups of affinity by artificial divisions and of
bringing together the unlike, as Cesalpino and the botanists of the
17th century had done before them, though continued practice was always
leading to a more perfect exhibition of natural affinities.
But while natural relationship was thus becoming more and more the
guiding idea in the minds of systematists, and the experience of
centuries was enforcing the lesson, that predetermined grounds of
classification could not do justice to natural affinities, the fact of
affinity became itself more unintelligible and mysterious. It seemed
impossible to give a clear and precise definition of the conception,
the exhibition of which was felt to be the proper object of all efforts
to discover the natural system, and which continued to be known by
the name of affinity. A sense of this mystery is expressed in the
sentence of Linnaeus: ‘It is not the character (the marks used to
characterise the genus) which makes the genus, but the genus which
makes the character;’ but the very man, who first distinctly recognised
this difficulty in the natural system, helped to increase it by his
doctrine of the constancy of species. This doctrine appears in Linnaeus
in an unobtrusive form, rather as resulting from daily experience and
liable to be modified by further investigation; but it became with
his successors an article of faith, a dogma, which no botanist could
even doubt without losing his scientific reputation; and thus during
more than a hundred years the belief, that every organic form owes its
existence to a separate act of creation and is therefore absolutely
distinct from all other forms, subsisted side by side with the fact
of experience, that there is an intimate tie of relationship between
these forms, which can only be imperfectly indicated by definite marks.
Every systematist knew that this relationship was something more than
mere resemblance perceivable by the senses, while thinking men saw
the contradiction between the assumption of an absolute difference
of origin in species (for that is what is meant by their constancy)
and the fact of their affinity. Linnaeus in his later years made some
strange attempts to explain away this contradiction; his successors
adopted a way of their own; various scholastic notions from the 16th
century still survived among the systematists, especially after
Linnaeus had assumed the lead among them, and it was thought that the
dogma of the constancy of species might find especially in Plato’s
misinterpreted doctrine of ideas a philosophical justification, which
was the more acceptable because it harmonised well with the tenets
of the Church. If, as Elias Fries said in 1835, there is ‘quoddam
supranaturale’ in the natural system, namely the affinity of organisms,
so much the better for the system; in the opinion of the same writer
each division of the system expresses an idea (‘singula sphaera
(sectio) ideam quandam exponit’), and all these ideas might easily
be explained in their ideal connection as representing the plan of
creation. If observation and theoretical considerations occasionally
suggested objections to such views, these objections were usually
little regarded, and in fact reflections of this kind on the real
meaning of the natural system did not often make their appearance;
the most intelligent men turned away with an uncomfortable feeling
from these doubts and difficulties, and preferred to devote their
time and powers to the discovery of affinities in individual forms.
At the same time it was well understood that the question was one
which lay at the foundation of the science. At a later period the
researches of Nägeli and others in morphology resulted in discoveries
of the greatest importance to systematic botany, and disclosed facts
which were necessarily fatal to the hypothesis, that every group
in the system represents an idea in the Platonic sense; such for
instance were the remarkable embryological relations, which Hofmeister
discovered in 1851, between Angiosperms, Gymnosperms, Vascular
Cryptogams and Muscineae; nor was it easy to reconcile the fact, that
the physiologico-biological peculiarities on the one hand and the
morphological and systematic characters on the other are commonly quite
independent of one another, with the plan of creation as conceived by
the systematists. Thus an opposition between true scientific research
and the theoretical views of the systematists became more and more
apparent, and no one who paid attention to both could avoid a painful
feeling of uncertainty with respect to this portion of the science.
This feeling was due to the dogma of the constancy of species, and to
the consequent impossibility of giving a scientific definition of the
idea of affinity.
This state of things finally ceased with the appearance of Darwin’s
first and best book on the origin of species in 1859; from a multitude
of facts, some new, but most of them long well-known, he showed that
the constancy of species was no longer an open question; that the
doctrine was no result of exact observation, but an article of faith
opposed to observation. The establishment of this truth was followed
almost as a matter of course by the true conception of that which had
been hitherto figuratively called affinity; the degrees of affinity
expressed in the natural system indicated the different degrees of
derivation of the varying progeny of common parents; out of affinity
taken in a figurative sense arose a real blood-relationship, and the
natural system became a table of the pedigree of the vegetable kingdom.
Here was the solution of the ancient problem.
Darwin’s theory has this special interest in the history of the
science, that it established clearness in the place of obscurity, a
scientific principle in place of a scholastic mode of thought, in the
domain of systematic botany and morphology. Yet Darwin did not effect
this change in opposition to the historical development of our science
or independently of it; on the contrary his great merit is that he has
correctly appreciated the problems long existing in systematic botany
and morphology from the point of view of modern research, and has
solved them.
That the constancy of species is incompatible with the idea of
affinity, that the morphological (genetic) nature of organs does not
proceed on parallel lines with their physiological and functional
significance, are facts which were known in botany and zoology before
the time of Darwin; but he was the first to show, that variation and
natural selection in the struggle for existence solve these problems,
and enable us to conceive of these facts as the necessary effects
of known causes; it is at the same time explained, why the natural
affinity first recognised by de l’Obel and Kaspar Bauhin cannot be
exhibited by the use of predetermined principles of classification, as
was attempted by Cesalpino.
CHAPTER I.
THE BOTANISTS OF GERMANY AND THE NETHERLANDS FROM BRUNFELS TO KASPAR
BAUHIN[2].
1530-1623.
When those who are accustomed to modern botanical literature take up
for the first time the works of Otto Brunfels (1530), Leonhard Fuchs
(1542), Hieronymus Bock (Tragus), or of the later authors Rembert
Dodoens (Dodonäus), Charles de l’Écluse (Carolus Clusius), Matthias
de l’Obel (Lobelius, 1576), or even those of Kaspar Bauhin from the
beginning of the 17th century, they are surprised not only by the
strange form, the curious and unfamiliar accessories from which what
is really useful must be laboriously extracted, but still more by the
extraordinary poverty of thought which characterises these composers of
usually very thick folios. If however instead of travelling backwards
from the present time they pursue the opposite direction; if they have
previously occupied themselves with the botanical views of Aristotle
and the comprehensive botanical works of his disciple Theophrastus
of Eresus, with Pliny’s Natural History and the medical science
of Dioscorides; if they have made themselves acquainted with the
botanical literature of the middle ages and noted how it continually
grows less and less valuable, and have proceeded through the works
of Albertus Magnus, as prolix as they are deficient in ideas, to the
‘Hortus Sanitatis’ (Garden of Health), the popular work on natural
history before and after 1500, and similar productions, then certainly
they receive a very different and almost imposing impression even from
the first herbals, those of Brunfels, Bock, and Fuchs. These books
will appear to them almost modern in comparison with the last-named
productions of medieval superstition, nor will they fail to perceive
that a new epoch of natural science commenced with these men, and above
all that they laid the foundations of modern botany. They give us, it
is true, nothing but separate descriptions of the wild and cultivated
plants of Germany, and these for the most part of common occurrence,
arranged by Fuchs alphabetically, by Bock grouped under the heads of
herbs, shrubs, and trees, and following one another under each head
in the most motley order; it is true that these descriptions are so
naive and inartistic as hardly to offer points of comparison with
modern scientifically correct diagnoses; but the great point is, that
they are taken from the plants as they lay before the writers, who had
often seen and carefully examined them. Woodcuts are added to supply
any defects in the description, and to give a clear idea of the plant
intended by the name; and these figures, which always give the whole
plant and were drawn immediately from nature by the hands of practised
artists, are so true to nature that a botanist’s eye at once recognises
in every case the object meant to be represented. These figures and
descriptions (the latter are wanting in Brunfels[3], 1530) would have
rendered a great service to the science, even if they had not been
as good as they are; for botanical literature had sunk so low, that
not only were the figures embellished with fabulous additions, as in
the ‘Hortus Sanitatis,’ and sometimes drawn purely from fancy, but the
meagre descriptions of quite common plants were not taken from nature,
but borrowed from earlier authorities and eked out with superstitious
fictions. The powers of independent judgment were oppressed and stunted
in the middle ages, till at last the very activity of the senses,
resting as it does to a great extent on unconscious operations of
the understanding, became weak and sickly; natural objects presented
themselves to the eye even of those who made them their study in
grotesquely distorted forms; every sensuous impression was corrupted
and deformed by the influence of a superstitious fancy. In comparison
with these perversions the artless descriptions of Bock appear suitable
and true, and are refreshing from their immediate contact with nature;
while in the more learned Fuchs criticism of other writers is already
seen united with actual examination of natural objects. Great was the
gain when men began once more to look at plants with open eyes, to
take pleasure in their variety and beauty. It was not necessary for a
while that they should speculate on the nature of plants, or the cause
of plant-life; time enough for that when sufficient practice had been
gained in the perception of their resemblances and differences.
The German fathers of botany connected their labours with the
botanical literature of classical antiquity only so far as they
sought to recognise in the plants of their own country those named by
Theophrastus, Dioscorides, Pliny and Galen. The attempt to do this
indeed led to many mistakes, for the descriptions of the ancient
botanists were very imperfect and often quite unserviceable for the
recognition of the plants described. In this point therefore the
compilers of herbals found no models worthy of imitation in the old
writers. But in seeking to recover a knowledge of the medicinal plants
of the Greek physicians[4], they were compelled to compare together a
great variety of native plants, and thus to exercise and perfect the
faculty of apprehending differences of form. This mode of proceeding,
arising out of medical requirements, directed the attention entirely
to the individual form, which was also the chief thing required in the
interest of pure science, and much more was thus gained than if these
men had only followed the philosophical writings of Aristotle[5] and
Theophrastus[6]. The Greek authors built their views on the philosophy
of botany on very weak foundations; scarcely a plant was known to them
exactly in all its parts; they derived much of their knowledge from
the accounts of others, often from dealers in herbs. From this scanty
material and from various popular superstitions had Aristotle formed
his views on the nature of plants, and if Theophrastus possessed more
experimental knowledge, he still saw facts in the light of his master’s
philosophical doctrines. If we succeed in the present day in extracting
much that is accurate from the writings of Aristotle and Theophrastus,
it was nevertheless well that the first compilers of herbals ceased
to pay attention to them, and occupied themselves with accumulating
descriptions of individual plants worked out by themselves with all
possible exactness. History shows that in this way a new science
arose in the course of a few years, while the philosophical botany of
Aristotle and Theophrastus has led to no important result. Moreover
we shall see how even in the hands of a philosophically gifted and
scholarly man like Cesalpino the teaching of Aristotle had only a
mischievous effect on the study of plants.
If the compilers of herbals did not aim at deducing general conclusions
from their observations, yet the continually accumulating descriptions
of individual forms gradually gave rise of themselves to perceptions
of an abstract and more comprehensive character. The feeling for
resemblance and difference of form especially was developed, and
finally the idea of natural relationship; and though this idea was
as yet by no means worked out with scientific precision, it was
nevertheless, even in the indistinct form in which it appears in de
l’Obel in 1576 and more clearly in Kaspar Bauhin in 1623, a result
of the highest value, and one of which neither learned antiquity
nor the middle ages had ever caught a glimpse. The perception of
a natural affinity among plants could only be obtained from exact
description a thousand times repeated, never from the abstractions
of the Aristotelian school, which rested essentially on superficial
observation. It appears then that the scientific value of the herbals
of the 16th century lay mostly in the description of such plants as
every botanist found in a somewhat limited portion of his native land,
and considered worth his notice; at the same time the later compilers
endeavoured to give a universal character to each herbal by admitting
plants which had not been actually seen by the writer; each as far as
possible gathered from his predecessors all that they had seen, and
added what he had himself seen that was new; but in contrast with the
previous centuries the peculiar merit of each new herbal was held to
depend not on what the compiler had borrowed from his predecessors,
but on what he had added from his own observation. Hence every one was
anxious to introduce into his work as many plants unknown till that
time or unnoticed as he possibly could, and the number of descriptions
of individual forms mounted rapidly up; in Fuchs in 1542 we find
about five hundred species described and figured, but in 1623 the
number of species as enumerated by Kaspar Bauhin had risen to six
thousand. As the botanists were spread over a large part of Germany,
Fuchs in Bavaria and afterwards at Tübingen, Bock on the middle Rhine,
Konrad Gesner at Zürich, Dodoens and de l’Obel in the Netherlands, a
territory of considerable extent was thus examined; it was enlarged
by the contributions which travellers brought or transmitted to the
botanists, and de l’Écluse especially traversed a large part of Germany
and Hungary and even of Spain, and eagerly collected and described
the plants of those countries. During this period also the number of
known plants was increased from Italy, partly by the exertions of
Italian botanists, such as Mattioli, and partly by travelling Germans.
The first flora of the Thüringer-Wald was written by Thal, but not
published till after his death in 1588. Botanical gardens even, though
in more modest form than in our day, were already helping in the 16th
century to add to the knowledge of plants; the first were formed in
Italy, as at Padua in 1545, at Pisa in 1547, at Bologna in 1567 under
Aldrovandi, afterwards under Cesalpino. Soon similar collections of
living plants were made in the north; in 1577 a botanic garden was
founded at Leyden, over which de l’Éluse long presided, in 1593 at
Heidelberg and at Montpellier; in the course of the next century the
number of these gardens was considerably increased.
The preserving of dried plants, the formation of the collections
which we now call herbaria, dates from the 16th century; at that time
however the word herbarium meant a book of plants. In this matter also
the Italians led the way. According to Ernst Meyer, Luca Ghini seems
to have been the first who made use of dried plants for scientific
purposes, and his two pupils Aldrovandi and Cesalpino are said to have
formed the first herbaria in our sense of the word; one of the first
collections of the kind, perhaps of the date of 1559, was the herbarium
formed by Ratzenberger, which was discovered in the museum at Cassel a
few years since and described by Kessler.
These are matters somewhat external to our immediate subject, but
they show how lively an interest was taken in botany in the latter
half of the sixteenth century; this is still more shown by the great
number of books of plants, published with numerous and expensive
plates and in some cases going through several editions. But the
artistic and scientific value of the drawings, which were appended
to the descriptions and in later herbals were reckoned by thousands,
did not keep equal pace with their number; Fuchs’ splendid figures
remained unapproached, and gradually, as the distance from Dürer’s time
increased, the wood-cuts grew smaller and poorer[7], and sometimes even
quite indistinct. The art of describing on the contrary continually
improved; the descriptions became fuller, and gradually a certain
method appeared in assigning marks and in estimating their value;
critical remarks on the identity or non-identity of species, the
separation of forms previously considered to be alike, and similar
matters occur more frequently. The descriptions in de l’Éluse may in
fact claim to be called scientific; in Kaspar Bauhin they appear in the
form of terse and methodical diagnoses.
The most remarkable thing to us in these descriptions from Fuchs and
Bock to Bauhin is the striking neglect of the flowers and fruit. The
earliest descriptions, especially those of Bock, endeavour to depict
the form of the plant in words, to render directly the impression on
the senses; special attention was paid to the shape of the leaves, the
nature of the ramification, the character of the roots, the size and
colour of the flowers. KONRAD GESNER[8] was the only one who bestowed
a closer attention on the flowers and parts of the fruits; he figured
them repeatedly, and recognised their great value for the determination
of affinity, as we learn from his expressions in his letters; but the
much occupied and much harassed man died before he could complete the
work on plants which he had long been preparing, and when in the 18th
century Schmidel published Gesner’s figures, which meanwhile had passed
through various hands, the work too long delayed remained useless to a
science which had already outstripped it.
It will be gathered from the above remarks, that we find in these
authors no approach to a system of morphology founded on a comparative
examination of the parts of plants, and therefore no regular technical
language. Still the more learned among them felt the necessity of
connecting the words they used in describing a plant with a fixed
sense, of defining their conceptions; and though their first efforts
in this direction were weak, they deserve notice, because they show
more than anything else how great has been the advance in the study of
nature from the 16th century to the present day.
The first attempt to establish a botanical terminology is to be found
as early as 1542 in the ‘Historia Stirpium’ of LEONHARD FUCHS[9]. Four
pages at the beginning of the work are thus occupied. A considerable
number of words are explained in alphabetical order—the mode of
arrangement which he followed also in describing his plants. It is
difficult to give a clear idea of this the first botanic terminology
by selected examples; yet the attempt must be made, because it is in
this way only that we learn to see from what feeble beginnings the
later scientific terminology and morphology has been developed. Thus
we read: ‘Acinus’ denotes not merely, as many believe, the grains
inside the grape, but the whole fruit, which consists of juice, of a
fleshy portion with the stones (‘vinaceis’), and of the outer skin.
Galen is quoted as authority for the following explanation: ‘Alae’
are said to be the hollows (angles) between the stem and its branches
(the leaves), from which new sprouts (‘proles’) proceed. ‘Asparragi,’
the germs of herbs which appear before the leaves and the first
edible shoots are developed. ‘Baccae’ are smaller ‘foetus’ of herbs,
shrubs, and trees, which appear separate and isolated on the plant, as
for example laurel-berries (‘partus lauri’), and differ from acini,
inasmuch as these are more crowded together. ‘Internodium’ is that
which lies between the articulations or knees. ‘Racemus’ is used for
the bunch of grapes, but does not belong to the vine only, but also to
the ivy and other herbs and shrubs which bear clusters of any kind. The
majority of such explanations of names concern the forms of the stem
and the branches, but the most remarkable thing about the whole list
is, that it does not include the words flower and root; yet under the
word ‘julus’ occurs the statement, that it is that which in the hazel
‘compactili callo racematim cohaeret,’ and may be described as a long
worm borne on a special pendent stalk and coming before the fruit.
Though the word flower is not explained, yet some parts of the flower
are mentioned; thus it is said, ‘stamina sunt, qui in medio calycis
erumpunt apices, sic dicta quod veluti filamenta intimo floris sinu
prosiliant.’ The explanation of the word fruit may be added: ‘Fructus,
quod carne et semine compactum est; frequenter tamen pro co, quod
involucro perinde quasi carne et semine coactum est, accipi solet.’
Progress in this direction was slow but still recognisable. In the
last edition of the ‘Pemptades’ of DODOENS[10] of the year 1616, a
folio volume of 872 pages, only one page and a third are devoted to
the explanation of the parts of plants; but the selection of the words
explained and the substance of the explanations hit the essential
points better than in Fuchs. We find for instance: Root (‘radix, ῥίζα’)
is the name given in the tree and in every other plant to the lower
part, by which it penetrates into the earth and cleaves to it, and by
which it draws its nourishment. This part, unlike the leaves which
are usually deciduous, is common to all plants, a few only excepted
which live and grow without roots, such as Cassytha, Viscum, and
the plant called ‘Hyphear,’ Fungi, Mosses, and Fuci, all which are
however usually reckoned among φῦτα. ‘Caudex’ is in trees and shrubs
that which springs from the root and rises above the ground, and by
which the nourishment is carried upwards; the same part is called in
herbs caulis or cauliculus. Leaf (‘folium’) is in every plant that
which clothes and adorns it, and without which trees and other plants
appear naked. The definition of a flower would lose in a translation:
‘flos, ἄνθος, arborem et herbarum gaudium dicitur, futurique fructus
spes est; unaquaeque etenim stirps pro natura sua post florem partus
ac fructus gignit.’ The parts of the flower are with him the calyx
(‘calyx’), in which the blossom is at first enclosed and with which
the ‘foetus’ is soon surrounded, stamens (‘stamina’) which arise like
threads from the depth of the blossom and from the calyx, and ‘apices’
(anthers), certain thickish appendages on the summit of the stamens.
‘Julus’ (catkin) is that which hangs down round and long in place of
the flower, as in the walnut, hazel, mulberry, beech, and other trees.
‘Fructus’ is that in which the seed is formed, but frequently it is
itself the seed, as where the latter is not enclosed in anything else
and is formed naked. We must not be led by these words to think of our
Gymnosperms, but must understand that here, as with all botanists till
the time of A. L. de Jussieu and Joseph Gärtner (1788), naked seeds
mean dry indehiscent fruits.
De l’Obel, from whom especially we might have looked for similar
explanations, has given none.
The absence of more profound comparative examination of the parts of
plants, as shown in the examples of terminology here adduced, may
serve as an additional support of the assertion, that natural affinity
was not inferred from exact comparison of the form of organs, but was
the result of a feeling arising from the likeness of habit directly
apprehended by the senses, that is by the collective impression
produced by the whole plant.
Passing to the consideration of the attempts in systematic botany made
by the Germans in this period, the chief thing to notice is, that
the division into the main groups of trees, shrubs, undershrubs, and
herbs was the one generally adopted; these groups were borrowed from
antiquity and were maintained even by the special systematists, from
Cesalpino to the beginning of the 18th century; nor was any change made
in principle when these four groups were reduced to three or two (trees
and herbs). It was moreover considered to be self-evident that trees
were the most perfect plants. Hence when relationship is spoken of in
subsequent remarks, it must be understood that this holds good only
within the groups just mentioned. The classifications of the German
and Dutch botanists not only sprang from the describing of individual
plants, but they were originally in a certain sense identical with
it. In undertaking to describe individual forms, the first task
was to separate those which closely resembled one another, for the
resemblance of systematically-allied plants is often so great, that
to distinguish them specifically requires consideration and careful
comparison. The resemblance is more obvious than the difference. There
are moreover many plants which are entirely distinct from one another
in their inner nature, but which appear strikingly alike if we regard
the impression produced immediately on the senses, and the converse
of this statement is equally true. Hence the attempt to circumscribe
and fix individual forms in the act of describing was at once found
to involve difficulties, the solution of which leads directly to the
conception of some kind of arrangement. A comparison of the herbals
of Fuchs and Bock up to Kaspar Bauhin shows very plainly how these
difficulties were gradually overcome, how the describing of single
species led necessarily, and without the intention of the describer,
to considerations of a distinctly systematic character. Where the
species in a group of forms, which we now designate as a genus or
family, closely resemble each other in habit, there arose of itself the
instinctive feeling that such forms belong to one another. This feeling
asserted itself in words when, as was done from the first, a number of
such forms were without conscious reflection designated by the same
name; thus, to mention one of many examples, we find Bock applying
the name Wolfsmilk, Euphorbia, not to one species of the genus, but
to several, which he then distinguishes by epithets (common, least,
cypress, sweet). The customary mode of expression in the herbals is
very instructive on this point; there are, they say, two or more of
this or that plant which have not been hitherto distinguished. But this
feeling of connection and similarity of kind was produced not only by
forms that were closely allied, but also by such as belong to extensive
groups of the system; thus the words moss, lichen, fungus, alga, fern,
had long served to include a great number of distinct forms, though the
separation of these groups had nowhere in truth been carried out with
logical precision.
These remarks are important as serving to show in the most decisive
manner the incorrectness of the assertion, that the study of organisms
sprang from the recognition of individual species; that it is this
which is directly given, and that without it no advance in the science
is possible. The historical fact rather is, that descriptive botany
began often, perhaps most often, not with species but with genera
and families, that very often at first whole groups of forms were
conceived of as unities, which had to be divided later and of set
purpose into separate forms; and up to the present day one part of
the task of the systematist is to undertake the splitting up of forms
previously regarded as identical. The notion that the species is the
object originally presented to the observer, and that certain species
were afterwards united into genera, is one that was invented in
post-Linnaean times under the dominion of the dogma of the constancy of
species; it happened so sometimes, but just as often the genus was the
object first presented, and the task of the describer was to resolve it
into a number of species. In the 16th century the conception neither
of genus or species had yet been defined; for the botanists of that
period genera and species had the same objective reality. But, in the
process of continually making the descriptions of individual plants
more exact, forms once separated were united, and those before assumed
to be identical were separated, till it gradually became apparent that
both operations must be pursued with system and method. It cannot
therefore be exactly said that somebody first established the species,
another the genus, and a third person again the larger groups. It is
more correct to say that the botanists of the 16th century carried out
this process of separation up to a certain point without intending it,
and in the effort to give the greatest possible preciseness to their
descriptions of individual forms. It lay therefore in the nature of
the case, that those groups which we call genera and species should
first be cleared up, and we find in fact at the end of this period in
Kaspar Bauhin the genera already distinguished by names, if not by
characters; the species by names and characters. Together with these
smaller groups, many more comprehensive ones, which we now designate
families, were also marked off and supplied with names, which are still
in use. The 16th century established the groups and names of Coniferae,
Umbelliferae, Verticillatae (Labiatae), Capillares (Ferns), and others.
It is true that the determination of the limits of these groups by
distinct marks was not yet attempted, but the plants belonging to these
groups were again and again treated of in special chapters or ranged
in due succession one after another. But as long as this was done to
some extent without design, and the real meaning of this relationship
was not yet recognised, other considerations of very various kinds
influenced the composition of the books and disturbed the natural
arrangement. The feeling for natural affinity supplants all other
considerations in de l’Obel first, and after him much more completely
in Kaspar Bauhin.
Enough perhaps has now been said to render the main result of the
botanical efforts of the period, which we are considering, intelligible
to the reader; but a clear view of the method of describing plants
at that time, and of the way in which systematic botany came into
being, can only be shown by examples; and if we proceed to give some
here, it is with the purpose with which figures copied as exactly as
possible from nature are added to treatises on natural history, because
a real understanding is only to be gained in this way. The botanical
literature of the 16th century is so different from that of the 19th,
that a very indistinct idea of it could be obtained from a statement of
results expressed in modern terms.
Fuchs, Historia Stirpium, 1542.
The common plant now known as Convolvulus arvensis is there called
Helxine cissampelos, and is described in the following manner:
‘_Nomina._—Ἑλξινὴ κισσάμπελος Graecis, Helxine cissampelus et
Convolvulus Latinis nominatur. Vulgus herbariorum et officinae
Volubilem mediam et vitealem appellant, Germani Mittelwinden oder
Weingartenwinden. Recte autem Cissampelos dicitur, in vineis enim
potissimum nascitur et folio hederaceo. Convolvulus vero quod crebra
revolutione vicinos frutices et herbas implicet.
_Forma._—Folia habet hederae similia, minora tamen, ramulos exiguos
circumplectentes quodcumque contigerint. Folia denique ejus scansili
ordine alterna subeunt. Flores primum candidos lilii effigie, dein in
puniceum vergentes, profert. Semen angulosum in folliculis acinorum
specie.
_Locus._—In vineis nascitur, unde etiam ei appellatio cissampeli, ut
diximus, indita est.
_Tempus._—Aestate, potissimum autem Julio et Augusto mensibus, floret.‘
HIERONYMUS BOCK[11], at page 299 of his ‘Herbal,’ published at
Strassburg in 1560, describes the same plant and Convolvulus sepium as
follows:
‘Of the white wind-bell.
‘Two common wind-plants grow everywhere in our land with white
bell-flowers. The larger prefers to dwell by hedges, and creeps over
itself, twists and twines, etc. The little wind- or bell-flower
(Convolvulus arvensis) is like the large one with its roots, round
stems, leaves and bell-flowers, in all things smaller, thinner,
and shorter. Some flowers on this plant are quite white, some of a
beautiful flesh colour, painted with reddish brown streaks. It grows in
dry meadows, in herb-and onion-gardens, and does harm therein, because
with its creeping and twining it oppresses other garden herbs, and is
also bad to exstirpate, because the thin white rootlets make their way
deep downwards, spread very widely, and are continually putting forth
new and young clusters like hops.’
Then follows a long paragraph on the names, that is, a critical
review of the opinions of different writers on the question, which
of Dioscorides’ or Pliny’s names should be applied to the plant
described. ‘I must think,’ says Bock, ‘that this flower is a wild sort,
Scammonia Dioscoridis (but harmless), which herb Dioscorides also calls
colophonia, dactylion, apopleumenon, sanilum, and colophonium,’ and
so on. Then follows a chapter on its virtue and effect externally and
internally.
As regards the arrangement of the 567 species described by Bock, he
divides his book into three parts, the first and second containing the
smaller herbs, the third the shrubs and trees. In each part closely
allied plants are generally described in larger or smaller numbers one
immediately after another, though the compiler is all the time under
the influence of very various considerations, and follows no general
principle. For instance, our Convolvulus stands in the midst of a
number of other very different plants, which either climb as the ivy,
or twine with tendrils as Smilax; then follows Lysimachia Nummularia,
which simply runs along the ground, then the hop, Solanum Dulcamara,
Clematis, Bryonia, Lonicera, and different Cucurbitaceae; immediately
after come the Burdocks, Teasels, and Thistles, and these are followed
by some Umbelliferae. The whole work is conceived in a similar spirit;
the feeling for relationship is clearly to be traced within very
narrow circles, but it finds imperfect expression and is frequently
disturbed by reference to biological habit; this appears especially
in the beginning of the third part, which treats of shrubs generally,
shrubs which form hedges, and trees, ‘as they grow in our German land’;
the first chapter is on the fungi which grow on trees, the second on
some mosses, and these are followed immediately by the mistletoe. Then
come the heather and some smaller shrubs, and finally larger and
the largest trees. The chapter on Fungi under the section ‘Of names’
contains a statement of views on the nature of fungi, such as are often
repeated even into the 17th century: ‘Mushrooms are neither herbs nor
roots, neither flowers nor seeds, but merely the superfluous moisture
of the earth and trees, of rotten wood and other rotten things. From
such moisture grow all tubera and fungi. This is plain from the fact
that all the above-mentioned mushrooms, those especially which are used
for eating, grow most when it will thunder or rain, as Aquinas Ponta
says. For this reason the ancients paid peculiar regard to them, and
were of opinion that tubera, since they come up from no seed, have some
connection with the sky; Porphyrius speaks also in this manner, and
says that fungi and tubera are called children of the gods, because
they are born without seeds and not as other kinds.’
We pass over Valerius Cordus, Conrad Gesner, Mattioli[12], and some
other unimportant writers, and turn to Dodoens, de l’Écluse, and
Dalechamps, in whom a marked tendency to orderly arrangement appears,
though the principle of arrangement in all three lies essentially in
points external and accidental, and above all in the relations of the
plant-world to mankind. Within the divisions thus artificially formed a
constantly increasing attention is paid to natural affinities, but at
the same time allied forms are separated without scruple in deference
to the artificial principle of classification. It can also be plainly
seen, that these writers think more of giving some order to their
matter than of discovering the arrangement that will be in conformity
with nature. It is impossible to give the reader a good idea of these
classifications in our scientific language; it would be necessary to
transcribe them. For brevity’s sake we will here quote DE L’ÉCLUSE
only[13], the best of the three writers named above. In his ‘Rariorum
plantarum historia,’ which appeared as early as 1576, but which lies
before the writer of these pages in the edition of 1601, the first book
treats of trees, shrubs, and undershrubs; the second of bulbous plants;
the third of sweet-smelling flowers; the fourth of those without
smell; the fifth of poisonous, narcotic, and acrid plants; the sixth
of those that have a milky juice, and of Umbelliferae, Ferns, Grasses,
Leguminosae, and some Cryptogams.
A similar arrangement is found in Dalechamps[14]; that of Dodoens in
his ‘Pemptades’ is more perplexed and unnatural; but the design in
both of them is evidently much the same as that of de l’Écluse. This
design is best seen from the introductory observations to each book;
de l’Écluse, for instance, says at page 127, ‘Having treated of the
history of trees, shrubs, and undershrubs, and put these together in
the preceding book, we will now in this second book describe such
plants as have a bulbous or tuberous root, many of which attract and
delight the eyes of all persons in an extraordinary degree by the
elegance and variety of their flowers, and which therefore ought not
to have the lowest place assigned to them among garland-plants (‘inter
coronarias’). We will begin with the plants of the lily kind, on
account of their size and the beauty of their flowers, etc. etc.‘ The
introductions to the several books of the ‘Pemptades’ of Dodoens are
more learned and more diffuse. It is plain that the composers of these
works had no thought of arranging their matter on the principles of a
true natural system, but were only anxious to give some kind of order
to their descriptions of individual plants. Hence their divisions do
not appear under the names of classes and subdivisions (‘genera majora
et minora,’ as they would have been called at that time), but they
are sections of the whole work kept as symmetrical as was possible.
If we would discover in these works whatever may really lay claim
to systematic value, we must not rely on the sections as they are
typographically distinguished, but must observe within each of them
the order in which the plants are given, and then it becomes apparent
that within the frame once established forms naturally allied are, as
far as may be, grouped together. For instance, we find in the second
book of de l’Écluse’s work first of all a long list of true Liliaceae
and Asphodeleae, Melanthaceae, and Irideae described in unbroken
succession; then comes Calamus, and then without any explanation a
number of the Ranunculaceae, among which the genera Ranunculus and
Anemone are very well distinguished; but then follows the genus
Cyclamen with several species, and next a number of Orchideae, in the
middle of which appear Orobanche and Corydalis, followed by Helleborus
niger, Veratrum album, Polygonatum, and others. So it is in the other
sections, though in general the species of a genus stand together,
and even the genera of a family are not unfrequently united; but with
all this there are no proper breaks, because other considerations
are perpetually disturbing the feeling for natural relationship. The
descriptions of de l’Écluse are generally commended, and they deserve
to be commended for their fulness of detail and their attention to
the structure of the flowers, though he, like de l’Obel and Dodoens,
describes the leaves more minutely than any other part of the plant.
With DE L’OBELL[15], as has been already observed, the feeling for
natural affinity declares itself for the first time so decidedly as to
outweigh if not entirely to set aside all other considerations. The
fact is disclosed to us in the preface to his ‘Stirpium adversaria
nova’ of 1576, where these words occur: ‘proinde adversariorum voce
novas veteribus additas plantas et novum ordinem quadantenus innuimus.
Qui ordo utique sibi similis et unus progreditur ducitque a sensui
propinquioribus et magis familiaribus ad ignotiora et compositiora,
modumque sive progressum similitudinis sequitur et familiaritatis, quo
et universim et particulatim, quantum licuit per rerum varietatem et
vastitatem, sibi responderet. Sic enim ordine, quo nihil pulchrius in
coelo aut in sapientis animo, quae longe lateque disparata sunt unum
quasi fiunt, magno verborum memoriae et cognitionis compendio, ut
Aristoteli et Theophrasto placet.’
We must not indeed expect to find that de l’Obel really produced a
natural system of plants; but his ‘Observationes’ still more than his
‘Adversaria’ attest his efforts to arrange plants according to their
resemblances in form; and in these efforts he is guided not by instinct
merely and the general habit, but mainly and with evident purpose by
the form of the leaves; thus beginning with Grasses, which have narrow,
long, and simple leaves, he proceeds to the broader-leaved Liliaceae
and Orchideae; then passing on to the Dicotyledons he exhibits the
main groups in fairly well limited masses. Still the Ferns appear in
the middle of the Dicotyledons on account of the form of their leaves,
while on the other hand, the Cruciferae, Umbelliferae, Papilionaceae
and Labiatae remain but little disturbed in their continuity by
secondary considerations.
The progress of botanical science in the period which we have been
considering reaches its highest point in the labours of Kaspar
Bauhin[16], as regards both the naming and describing of individual
plants and their classification according to likeness of habit. In
Bauhin all secondary considerations have disappeared; his works may be
called botanical in the strict scientific meaning of the word, and they
show how far it is possible to advance in a descriptive science without
the aid of a general system of comparative morphology, and how far the
mere perception of likeness of habit is a sufficient foundation for
a natural classification of plants; it was scarcely possible to make
greater advances on the path pursued by the botanists of Germany and
the Netherlands.
The descriptions of species in the ‘Prodromus Theatri Botanici’ of
KASPAR BAUHIN (1620) notice all obvious parts of the plant with all
possible brevity and in a fixed order; the form of the root, height and
form of the stem, characters of the leaves, flowers, fruit, and seed
are given in concise sentences seldom occupying more than twenty short
lines; the description of a single species is here in fact developed
into an art and becomes a diagnosis.
A still higher value must be set on the fact, that in Kaspar Bauhin the
distinction between species and genus is fully and consciously carried
out; every plant has with him a generic and a specific name, and this
binary nomenclature, which Linnaeus is usually thought to have founded,
is almost perfectly maintained by Bauhin, especially in the ‘Pinax’; it
is true that a third and fourth word is not unfrequently appended to
the second, the specific name, but this additional word is evidently
only an auxiliary. It is remarkable on the other hand, that he has
added no characters to the names of the genera; it is only from the
name that we know that several species belong to one genus; we might
almost believe that the characters of the genus are intended to be
supplied by the strange etymological explanation appended in italics
to the generic name. These fanciful etymologies maintained themselves
to the end of the 17th century, when Tournefort did battle with them;
they were an evil which sprang in a great measure from Aristotelian and
scholastic modes of thought, and from the belief that it was possible
to conceive of the nature of a thing from the original meaning of its
name.
Nothing shows better the earnestness of Bauhin’s research than the
fact, that he devoted the labour of forty years to his ‘Pinax,’ in
order to show how each one of the species given by him was named by
earlier botanists. The example already given from Fuchs shows how many
names a plant had received by the middle of the 16th century; even in
Dioscorides and Pliny we find a whole row of names given for a single
plant, and the botanists of Fuchs’ time used their utmost endeavours
to attach the names in Dioscorides and other ancient writers to
particular plants found in central Europe. Dioscorides, Theophrastus,
and Pliny either add no descriptions to the names of their plants, or
they describe them in so unsatisfactory a manner, that it was a very
difficult task for the science of that day, as it is still for us,
to recognise the plants of the ancient writers; hence arose such a
confusion of names that the reader of a botanical work can never be
sure whether the plant of one author is the same as that of another
with the same name. A description of a plant is therefore usually
accompanied in the 16th century by a critical enquiry how far the name
used agrees with that of other authors. Kaspar Bauhin sought to put an
end to this condition of uncertainty by his ‘Pinax,’ in which he showed
in the case of all species known to him what were the names given to
them by the earlier writers, and he has thus enabled us to see our
way through the nomenclature of the period of which we are speaking;
the ‘Pinax’ is in a word the first and for that time a completely
exhaustive book of synonyms, and is still indispensable for the history
of individual species—no small praise to be given to a work that is
more than 250 years old.
It would not have been unsuitable to the purpose of the author of the
‘Pinax,’ if he had allowed himself to give the plants in alphabetical
order, but instead of this we find a careful arrangement according
to natural affinities. This directly proves what is also confirmed
by the ‘Prodromus,’ that Bauhin regarded such an arrangement as of
the greatest importance. In this point, as in others, he goes far
beyond his predecessors; he pursues the same method as de l’Obel had
pursued forty years before, but he carries it out more thoroughly. At
the same time he shares with his predecessors the peculiarity of not
distinguishing the larger groups, which with some exceptions answer to
our present families, by special names or by descriptions; it is only
from the order in which the species follow one another that we can
gather his views on natural relationship. It follows therefore that
the natural families, so far as they are distinguishable in Bauhin’s
works, have no sharp bounding lines; we might almost conclude that he
purposely avoided assigning such limits, that he might be able to pass
without interruption from one chain of relationship to another.
Like de l’Obel, Bauhin proceeds in his enumeration from the supposed
most imperfect to the more perfect forms, beginning with the Grasses
and the majority of Liliaceae and Zingiberaceae, passing on to
dicotyledonous herbs, and ending with shrubs and trees.
The Cryptogams that were known to him stand in the middle of the series
of dicotyledonous herbs, between the Papilionaceae and the Thistles,
the Equisetaceae being reckoned among the Grasses. On the great
distinction between Cryptogams and Phanerogams the views of Bauhin
were evidently less clear than those of many of his predecessors; but
it will not seem strange that he should place some Phanerogams, as
for instance the Duckweeds, among the Cryptogams and the Salviniaceae
among the Mosses, and unite the Corals, Alcionieae, and Sponges with
the Seaweeds, when we consider that it was not till the middle of the
18th century that more correct views arose in respect to these forms,
and that Linnaeus himself could not decide whether the Zoophytes
should be excluded from the vegetable kingdom and ranked with animals.
The knowledge of plants in the scientific sense of the word was till
the beginning of the 19th century limited to the Phanerogams; and
in speaking of principles and methods in descriptive botany before
that time we must think only of the Phanerogams, or at most of the
Phanerogams and the Ferns. The methodical examination of the Cryptogams
belongs to quite recent botanical research. The matter is here alluded
to only in connection with the fact, that it is from the works of
Kaspar Bauhin, a writer of ability, in whom the first period of
scientific botany culminates, that we most clearly see how great the
advance has been since his time.