human knowledge,[23\16] by preserving, and transmitting to more
enlightened times, the intellectual treasures of antiquity. The
unhappy dissensions which took place in the Christian church had
scattered these treasures over the East, at a period much antecedent
to the rise of the Saracen power. In the fifth century, the
adherents of Nestorius, bishop of Constantinople, were declared
heretical by the Council of Ephesus (A.D. 431), and driven into
exile. In this manner, many of the most learned and ingenious men of
the Christian world were removed to the Euphrates, where they formed
the _Chaldean_ church, erected the celebrated Nestorian school of
Edessa, and gave rise to many offsets from this in various regions.
Already, in the fifth century, Hibas, Cumas, and Probus, translated
the writings of Aristotle into Syriac. But the learned Nestorians
paid an especial attention to the art of medicine, and were the most
zealous students of the works of the Greek physicians. At
Djondisabor, in Khusistan, they became an ostensible medical school,
who distributed academical honors as the result of public
disputations. The califs of Bagdad heard of the fame and the wisdom
of the doctors of Djondisabor, summoned some of them to Bagdad, and
took measures for the foundation of a school of learning in that
city. The value of the skill, the learning, and the virtues of the
Nestorians, was so strongly felt, that they were allowed by the
Mohammedans the free exercise of the Christian religion, and
intrusted with the conduct of the studies of those of the Moslemin,
whose education was most cared for. The affinity of the Syriac and
Arabic languages made the task of instruction more easy. The
Nestorians translated the works of the ancients out of the former
into the latter language: hence there are still found Arabic
manuscripts of Dioscorides, with Syriac words in the margin. Pliny
and Aristotle likewise assumed an Arabic dress; and were, as well as
Dioscorides, the foundation of instruction in all the Arabian
academies; of which a great number were established throughout the
Saracen empire, from Bokhara in the remotest east, to Marocco and
Cordova in the west. After some time, the Mohammedans themselves
began to translate and {366} extract from their Syriac sources; and
at length to write works of their own. And thus arose vast
libraries, such as that of Cordova, which contained 250,000 volumes.
[Note 23\16: Sprengel, i. 203.]
The Nestorians are stated[24\16] to have first established among the
Arabs those collections of medicinal substances (_Apothecæ_), from
which our term _Apothecary_ is taken; and to have written books
(_Dispensatoria_) containing systematic instructions for the
employment of these medicaments; a word which long continued to be
implied in the same sense, and which we also retain, though in a
modified application (_Dispensary_).
[Note 24\16: Sprengel, i. 205.]
The directors of these collections were supposed to be intimately
acquainted with plants; and yet, in truth, the knowledge of plants
owed but little to them; for the Arabic Dioscorides was the source
and standard of their knowledge. The flourishing commerce of the
Arabians, their numerous and distant journeys, made them, no doubt,
practically acquainted with the productions of lands unknown to the
Greeks and Romans. Their Nestorian teachers had established
Christianity even as far as China and Malabar; and their travellers
mention[25\16] the camphor of Sumatra, the aloe-wood of Socotra near
Java, the tea of China. But they never learned the art of converting
their practical into speculative knowledge. They treat of plants
only in so far as their use in medicine is concerned,[26\16] and
followed Dioscorides in the description, and even in the order of
the plants, except when they arrange them according to the Arabic
alphabet. With little clearness of view, they often mistake what
they read:[27\16] thus when Dioscorides says that _ligusticon_ grows
on the _Apennine_, a mountain not far from the _Alps_; Avicenna,
misled by a resemblance of the Arabic letters, quotes him as saying
that the plant grows on _Akabis_, a mountain near _Egypt_.
[Note 25\16: Sprengel, i. 206.]
[Note 26\16: Ib. i. 207.]
[Note 27\16: Ib. i. 211.]
It is of little use to enumerate such writers. One of the most noted
of them was Mesuë, physician of the Calif of Kahirah. His work,
which was translated into Latin at a later period, was entitled, _On
Simple Medicines_; a title which was common to many medical
treatises, from the time of Galen in the second century. Indeed, of
this opposition of _simple_ and _compound_ medicines, we still have
traces in our language: {367}
He would ope his leathern scrip,
And show me _simples_ of a thousand names,
Telling their strange and vigorous faculties.
MILTON, _Comus_.
Where the subject of our history is so entirely at a stand, it is
unprofitable to dwell on a list of names. The Arabians, small as
their science was, were able to instruct the Christians. Their
writings were translated by learned Europeans, for instance Michael
Scot, and Constantine of Africa, a Carthaginian who had lived forty
years among the Saracens[28\16] and who died A.D. 1087. Among his
works, is a Treatise, _De Gradibus_, which contains the Arabian
medicinal lore. In the thirteenth century occur Encyclopædias, as
that of Albertus Magnus, and of Vincent of Beauvais; but these
contain no natural history except traditions and fables. Even the
ancient writers were altogether perverted and disfigured. The
Dioscorides of the middle ages varied materially from ours.[29\16]
Monks, merchants, and adventurers travelled far, but knowledge was
little increased. Simon of Genoa,[30\16] a writer on plants in the
fourteenth century, boasts that he perambulated the East in order to
collect plants. "Yet in his _Clavis Sanationis_," says a modern
botanical writer,[31\16] "we discover no trace of an acquaintance
with nature. He merely compares the Greek, Arabic, and Latin names
of plants, and gives their medicinal effect after his
predecessors:"--so little true is it, that the use of the senses
alone necessarily leads to real knowledge.
[Note 28\16: Sprengel, i. 230.]
[Note 29\16: Ib. i. 239.]
[Note 30\16: Ib. i. 241.]
[Note 31\16: Ib. ib.]
Though the growing activity of thought in Europe, and the revived
acquaintance with the authors of Greece in their genuine form, were
gradually dispelling the intellectual clouds of the middle ages, yet
during the fifteenth century, botany makes no approach to a
scientific form. The greater part of the literature of this subject
consisted of Herbals, all of which were formed on the same plan, and
appeared under titles such as _Hortus_, or _Ortus Sanitatis_. There
are, for example, three[32\16] such German Herbals, with woodcuts,
which date about 1490. But an important peculiarity in these works
is that they contain some indigenous species placed side by side
with the old ones. In 1516, _The Grete Herbal_ was published in
England, also with woodcuts. It contains an account of more than
four hundred vegetables, and their {368} products; of which one
hundred and fifty are English, and are no way distinguished from the
exotics by the mode in which they are inserted in the work.
[Note 32\16: Augsburg, 1488. Mainz, 1491. Lubec, 1492.]
We shall see, in the next chapter, that when the intellect of Europe
began really to apply itself to the observation of nature, the
progress towards genuine science soon began to be visible, in this
as in other subjects; but before this tendency could operate freely,
the history of botany was destined to show, in another instance, how
much more grateful to man, even when roused to intelligence and
activity, is the study of tradition than the study of nature. When
the scholars of Europe had become acquainted with the genuine works
of the ancients in the original languages, the pleasure and
admiration which they felt, led them to the most zealous endeavors
to illustrate and apply what they read. They fell into the error of
supposing that the plants described by Theophrastus, Dioscorides,
Pliny, must be those which grew in their own fields. And thus
Ruellius,[33\16] a French physician, who only travelled in the
environs of Paris and Picardy, imagined that he found there the
plants of Italy and Greece. The originators of genuine botany in
Germany, Brunfels and Tragus (Bock), committed the same mistake; and
hence arose the misapplication of classical names to many genera.
The labors of many other learned men took the same direction, of
treating the ancient writers as if they alone were the sources of
knowledge and truth.
[Note 33\16: _De Natura Stirpium_, 1536.]
But the philosophical spirit of Europe was already too vigorous to
allow this superstitious erudition to exercise a lasting sway.
Leonicenus, who taught at Ferrara till he was almost a hundred years
old, and died in 1524,[34\16] disputed, with great freedom, the
authority of the Arabian writers, and even of Pliny. He saw, and
showed by many examples, how little Pliny himself knew of nature,
and how many errors he had made or transmitted. The same
independence of thought with regard to other ancient writers, was
manifested by other scholars. Yet the power of ancient authority
melted away but gradually. Thus Antonius Brassavola, who established
on the banks of the Po the first botanical garden of modern times,
published in 1536, his _Examen omnium Simplicium Medicamentorum_;
and, as Cuvier says,[35\16] though he studied plants in nature, his
book (written in the {369} Platonic form of dialogue), has still the
character of a commentary on the ancients.
[Note 34\16: Sprengel, i. 252.]
[Note 35\16: _Hist. des Sc. Nat._ partie ii. 169.]
The Germans appear to have been the first to liberate themselves
from this thraldom, and to publish works founded mainly on actual
observation. The first of the botanists who had this great merit is
Otho Brunfels of Mentz, whose work, _Herbarum Vivæ Icones_, appeared
in 1530. It consists of two volumes in folio, with wood-cuts; and in
1532, a German edition was published. The plants which it contains
are given without any arrangement, and thus he belongs to the period
of unsystematic knowledge. Yet the progress towards the formation of
a system manifested itself so immediately in the series of German
botanists to which he belongs, that we might with almost equal
propriety transfer him to the history of that progress; to which we
now proceed.
CHAPTER III.
FORMATION OF A SYSTEM OF ARRANGEMENT OF PLANTS.
_Sect._ 1.--_Prelude to the Epoch of Cæsalpinus._
THE arrangement of plants in the earliest works was either
arbitrary, or according to their use, or some other extraneous
circumstance, as in Pliny. This and the division of vegetables by
Dioscorides into _aromatic_, _alimentary_, _medicinal_, _vinous_,
is, as will be easily seen, a merely casual distribution. The
Arabian writers, and those of the middle ages, showed still more
clearly their insensibility to the nature of system, by adopting an
alphabetical arrangement; which was employed also in the Herbals of
the sixteenth century. Brunfels, as we have said, adopted no
principle of order; nor did his successor, Fuchs. Yet the latter
writer urged his countrymen to put aside their Arabian and barbarous
Latin doctors, and to observe the vegetable kingdom for themselves;
and he himself set the example of doing this, examined plants with
zeal and accuracy, and made above fifteen hundred drawings of
them.[36\16] {370}
[Note 36\16: His _Historia Stirpium_ was published at Basil in 1542.]
The difficulty of representing plants in any useful way by means of
drawings, is greater, perhaps, than it at first appears. So long as
no distinction was made of the importance of different organs of the
plant, a picture representing merely the obvious general appearance
and larger parts, was of comparatively small value. Hence we are not
to wonder at the slighting manner in which Pliny speaks of such
records. "Those who gave such pictures of plants," he says,
"Crateuas, Dionysius, Metrodorus, have shown nothing clearly, except
the difficulty of their undertaking. A picture may be mistaken, and
is changed and disfigured by copyists; and, without these
imperfections, it is not enough to represent the plant in one state,
since it has four different aspects in the four seasons of the year."
The diffusion of the habit of exact drawing, especially among the
countrymen of Albert Durer and Lucas Cranach, and the invention of
wood-cuts and copper-plates, remedied some of these defects.
Moreover, the conviction gradually arose in men's minds that the
structure of the flower and the fruit are the most important
circumstances in fixing the identity of the plant. Theophrastus
speaks with precision of the organs which he describes, but these
are principally the leaves, roots, and stems. Fuchs uses the term
_apices_ for the anthers, and _gluma_ for the blossom of grasses,
thus showing that he had noticed these parts as generally present.
In the next writer whom we have to mention, we find some traces of a
perception of the real resemblances of plants beginning to appear.
It is impossible to explain the progress of such views without
assuming in the reader some acquaintance with plants; but a very few
words may suffice to convey the requisite notions. Even in plants
which most commonly come in our way, we may perceive instances of
the resemblances of which we speak. Thus, Mint, Marjoram, Basil,
Sage, Lavender, Thyme, Dead-nettle, and many other plants, have a
tubular flower, of which the mouth is divided into two lips; hence
they are formed into a family, and termed _Labiatæ_. Again, the
Stock, the Wall-flower, the Mustard, the Cress, the Lady-smock, the
Shepherd's purse, have, among other similarities, their blossoms
with four petals arranged crosswise; these are all of the order
_Cruciferæ_. Other flowers, apparently more complex, still resemble
each other, as Daisy. Marigold, Aster, and Chamomile; these belong
to the order _Compositæ_. And though the members of each such family
may differ widely in their larger parts, their stems and leaves, the
close study of nature leads the botanist irresistibly to consider
their resemblances as {371} occupying a far more important place
than their differences. It is the general establishment of this
conviction and its consequences which we have now to follow.
The first writer in whom we find the traces of an arrangement
depending upon these natural resemblances, is Hieronymus Tragus,
(Jerom Bock,) a laborious German botanist, who, in 1551, published a
herbal. In this work, several of the species included in those
natural families to which we have alluded,[37\16] as for instance
the Labiatæ, the Cruciferæ, the Compositæ, are for the most part
brought together; and thus, although with many mistakes as to such
connexions, a new principle of order is introduced into the subject.
[Note 37\16: Sprengel, i. 270.]
In pursuing the development of such principles of natural order, it
is necessary to recollect that the principles lead to an assemblage
of divisions and groups, successively subordinate, the lower to the
higher, like the brigades, regiments, and companies of an army, or
the provinces, towns, and parishes of a kingdom. Species are
included in Genera, Genera in Families or Orders, and orders in
Classes. The perception that there is some connexion among the
species of plants, was the first essential step; the detection of
different marks and characters which should give, on the one hand,
limited groups, on the other, comprehensive divisions, were other
highly important parts of this advance. To point out every
successive movement in this progress would be a task of extreme
difficulty, but we may note, as the most prominent portions of it,
the establishment of the groups which immediately include Species,
that is, _the formation of Genera_; and the invention of a method
which should distribute into consistent and distinct divisions the
whole vegetable kingdom, that is, _the construction of a System_.
To the second of these two steps we have no difficulty in assigning
its proper author. It belongs to Cæsalpinus, and marks the first
great epoch of this science. It is less easy to state to what
botanist is due the establishment of Genera; yet we may justly
assign the greater part of the merit of this invention, as is
usually done, to Conrad Gessner of Zurich. This eminent naturalist,
after publishing his great work on animals, died[38\16] of the
plague in 1565, at the age of forty-nine, while he was preparing to
publish a History of Plants, a sequel to his History of Animals. The
fate of the work thus left {372} unfinished was remarkable. It fell
into the hands of his pupil, Gaspard Wolf, who was to have published
it, but wanting leisure for the office, sold it to Joachim
Camerarius, a physician and botanist of Nuremberg, who made use of
the engravings prepared by Gessner, in an Epitome which he published
in 1586. The text of Gessner's work, after passing through various
hands, was published in 1754 under the title of _Gessneri Opera
Botanica per duo Sæcula desiderata, &c._, but is very incomplete.
[Note 38\16: Cuvier, _Leçons sur l'Hist. des Sciences Naturelles_,
partie ii. p. 193.]
The imperfect state in which Gessner left his botanical labors,
makes it necessary to seek the evidence of his peculiar views in
scattered passages of his correspondence and other works. One of his
great merits was, that he saw the peculiar importance of the flower
and fruit as affording the characters by which the affinities of
plants were to be detected; and that he urged this view upon his
contemporaries. His plates present to us, by the side of each plant,
its flower and its fruit, carefully engraved. And in his
communications with his botanical correspondents, he repeatedly
insists on these parts. Thus[39\16] in 1565 he writes to Zuinger
concerning some foreign plants which the latter possessed: "Tell me
if your plants have fruit and flower, as well as stalk and leaves,
for those are of much the greater consequence. By these three
marks,--flower, fruit, and seed,--I find that Saxifraga and
Consolida Regalis are related to Aconite." These characters, derived
from the _fructification_ (as the assemblage of flower and fruit is
called), are the means by which genera are established, and hence,
by the best botanists, Gessner is declared to be the inventor of
genera.[40\16] {373}
[Note 39\16: _Epistolæ_, fol. 113 a; see also fol. 65 b.]
[Note 40\16: Haller, _Biblio Botanica_, i. 284. Methodi Botanicæ
rationem primus pervidit;--dari nempe et genera quæ plures species
comprehenderent et classes quæ multa genera. Varias etiam classes
naturales expressit. Characterem in flore inque semine posuit,
&c.--_Rauwolfio Socio Epist._ Wolf, p. 39.
Linnæus, _Genera Plantarum_, Pref. xiii. "A fructificatione plantas
distinguere in genera, infinitæ sapientiæ placuisse, detexit
posterior ætas, et quidem primus, sæculi sui ornamentum, Conradus
Gessnerus, uti patet ex Epistolis ejus postremis, et Tabulis per
Carmerarium editis."
Cuvier says (_Hist. des Sc. Nat._ 2^e p^e, p. 193), after speaking to
the same effect, "Il fit voir encore que toutes les plantes qui ont
des fleurs et des fruits semblables se ressemblent par leurs
propriétés, et que quand on rapproche ces plantes on obtient ainsi une
classification naturelle." I do not know if he here refers to any
particular passages of Gessner's work.]
The labors of Gessner in botany, both on account of the unfinished
state in which he left the application of his principles, and on
account of the absence of any principles manifestly applicable to
the whole extent of the vegetable kingdom, can only be considered as
a prelude to the epoch in which those defects were supplied. To that
epoch we now proceed.
_Sect._ 2.--_Epoch of Cæsalpinus.--Formation of a System of
Arrangement._
IF any one were disposed to question whether Natural History truly
belongs to the domain of Inductive Science;--whether it is to be
prosecuted by the same methods, and requires the same endowments of
mind as those which lead to the successful cultivation of the
Physical Sciences,--the circumstances under which Botany has made
its advance appear fitted to remove such doubts. The first decided
step in this study was merely the construction of a classification
of its subjects. We shall, I trust, be able to show that such a
classification includes, in reality, the establishment of one
general principle, and leads to more. But without here dwelling on
this point, it is worth notice that the person to whom we owe this
classification, Andreas Cæsalpinus of Arezzo, was one of the most
philosophical men of his time, profoundly skilled in the
Aristotelian lore which was then esteemed, yet gifted with courage
and sagacity which enabled him to weigh the value of the Peripatetic
doctrines, to reject what seemed error, and to look onwards to a
better philosophy. "How are we to understand," he inquires, "that we
must proceed from universals to particulars (as Aristotle directs),
when particulars are better known?"[41\16] Yet he treats the Master
with deference, and, as has been observed,[42\16] we see in his
great botanical work deep traces of the best features of the
Aristotelian school, logic and method; and, indeed, in this work he
frequently refers to his _Quæstiones Peripateticæ_. His book,
entitled _De Plantis libri_ xvi. appeared at Florence in 1583. The
aspect under which his task presented itself to his mind appears to
me to possess so much interest, that I will transcribe a few of his
reflections. After speaking of the splendid multiplicity of the
productions of nature, and the confusion which has hitherto
prevailed among writers on plants, {374} the growing treasures of
the botanical world; he adds,[43\16] "In this immense multitude of
plants, I see that want which is most felt in any other unordered
crowd: if such an assemblage be not arranged into brigades like an
army, all must be tumult and fluctuation. And this accordingly
happens in the treatment of plants: for the mind is overwhelmed by
the confused accumulation of things, and thus arise endless mistake
and angry altercation." He then states his general view, which, as
we shall see, was adopted by his successors. "_Since all science
consists in the collection of similar, and the distinction of
dissimilar things_, and since the consequence of this is a
distribution into genera and species, which are to be natural
classes governed by real differences, I have attempted to execute
this task in the whole range of plants;--ut si quid pro ingenii mei
tenuitate in hujusmodi studio profecerim, ad communem utilitatem
proferam." We see here how clearly he claims for himself the credit
of being the first to execute this task of arrangement.
[Note 41\16: _Quæstiones Peripateticæ_, (1569,) lib. i. quæst. i.]
[Note 42\16: Cuvier, p. 198.]
[Note 43\16: Dedicatio, a 2.]
After certain preparatory speculations, he says,[44\16] "Let us now
endeavor to mark the kinds of plants by essential circumstances in
the fructification." He then observes, "In the constitution of
organs three things are mainly important--the number, the position,
the figure." And he then proceeds to exemplify this: "Some have
under one flower, ONE _seed_, as _Amygdala_, or ONE
seed-_receptacle_, as _Rosa_; or TWO _seeds_, as _Ferularia_, or TWO
seed-_receptacles_, as _Nasturtium_; or three, as the _Tithymalum_
kind have THREE _seeds_, the _Bulbaceæ_ THREE _receptacles_; or
four, as _Marrubium_, FOUR _seeds_, _Siler_ FOUR _receptacles_; or
more, as _Cicoraceæ_, and _Acanaceæ_ have MORE _seeds_, _Pinus_,
MORE _receptacles_."
[Note 44\16: Lib. i. c. 13, 14.]
It will be observed that we have here ten classes made out by means
of number alone, added to the consideration of whether the seed is
alone in its covering, as in a cherry, or contained in a receptacle
with several others, as in a berry, pod, or capsule. Several of
these divisions are, however, further subdivided according to other
circumstances, and especially according as the vital part of the
seed, which he called the heart (_cor_[45\16]), is situated in the
upper or lower part of the seed. As our object here is only to
indicate the principle of the method of Cæsalpinus, I need not
further dwell on the details, and still less on the defects by which
it is disfigured, as, for instance, the retention of the old
distinction of Trees, Shrubs, and Herbs. {375}
[Note 45\16: _Corculum_, of Linnæus.]
To some persons it may appear that this arbitrary distribution of
the vegetable kingdom, according to the number of parts of a
particular kind, cannot deserve to be spoken of as a great
discovery. And if, indeed, the distribution had been arbitrary, this
would have been true; the real merit of this and of every other
system is, that while it is artificial in its form, it is natural in
its results. The plants which are associated by the arrangement of
Cæsalpinus, are those which have the closest resemblances in the
most essential points. Thus, as Linnæus says, though the first in
attempting to form natural orders, he observed as many as the most
successful of later writers. Thus his _Legumina_[46\16] correspond
to the natural order _Leguminosæ_; his _genus Ferulaceum_[47\16] to
the _Umbellatæ_; his _Bulbaceæ_[48\16] to _Liliaceæ_; his
_Anthemides_[49\16] to the _Compositæ_; in like manner, the
_Boragineæ_ are brought together,[50\16] and the _Labiatæ_. That
such assemblages are produced by the application of his principles,
is a sufficient evidence that they have their foundation in the
general laws of the vegetable world. If this had not been the case,
the mere application of number or figure alone as a standard of
arrangement, would have produced only intolerable anomalies. If, for
instance, Cæsalpinus had arranged plants by the number of flowers on
the same stalk, he would have separated individuals of the same
species; if he had distributed them according to the number of
leaflets which compose the leaves, he would have had to place far
asunder different species of the same genus. Or, as he himself
says,[51\16] "If we make one genus of those which have a round root,
as Rapum, Aristolochia, Cyclaminus, Aton, we shall separate from
this genus those which most agree with it, as Napum and Raphanum,
which resemble Rapum, and the long Aristolochia, which resembles the
round; while we shall join the most remote kinds, for the nature of
Cyclaminus and Rapum is altogether diverse in all other respects. Or
if we attend to the differences of stalk, so as to make one genus of
those which have a naked stalk, as the Junci, Cæpe, Aphacæ, along
with Cicoraceæ, Violæ, we shall still connect the most unlike
things, and disjoin the closest affinities. And if we note the
differences of leaves, or even flowers, we fall into the same
difficulty; for many plants very different in kind have leaves very
similar, as Polygonum and Hypericum, Ernea and Sesamois, Apium and
Ranunculus; and plants of the same genus have sometimes very
different {376} leaves, as the several species of Ranunculus and of
Lactuca. Nor will color or shape of the flowers help us better; for
what has Vitis in common with Œnanthe, except the resemblance of the
flower?" He then goes on to say, that if we seek a too close
coincidence of all the characters we shall have no Species; and thus
shows us that he had clearly before his view the difficulty, which
he had to attack, and which it is his glory to have overcome, that
of constructing Natural Orders.
[Note 46\16: Lib. vi.]
[Note 47\16: Lib. vii.]
[Note 48\16: Lib. x.]
[Note 49\16: Lib. xii.]
[Note 50\16: Lib. xi.]
[Note 51\16: Lib. i. cap. xii. p. 25.]
But as the principles of Cæsalpinus are justified, on the one hand,
by their leading to _Natural Orders_, they are recommended on the
other by their producing a _System_ which applies through the whole
extent of the vegetable kingdom. The parts from which he takes his
characters must occur in all flowering-plants, for all such plants
have seeds. And these seeds, if not very numerous for each flower,
will be of a certain definite number and orderly distribution. And
thus every plant will fall into one part or other of the same system.
It is not difficult to point out, in this induction of Cæsalpinus,
the two elements which we have so often declared must occur in all
inductive processes; the exact acquaintance with _facts_, and the
general and applicable _ideas_ by which these facts are brought
together. Cæsalpinus was no mere dealer in intellectual relations or
learned traditions, but a laborious and persevering collector of
plants and of botanical knowledge. "For many years," he says in his
Dedication, "I have been pursuing my researches in various regions,
habitually visiting the places in which grew the various kinds of
herbs, shrubs, and trees; I have been assisted by the labors of many
friends, and by gardens established for the public benefit, and
containing foreign plants collected from the most remote regions."
He here refers to the first garden directed to the public study of
Botany, which was that of Pisa,[52\16] instituted in 1543, by order
of the Grand Duke Cosmo the First. The management of it was confided
first to Lucas Ghini, and afterwards to Cæsalpinus. He had collected
also a herbarium of dried plants, which he calls the rudiment of his
work. "Tibi enim," he says, in his dedication to Francis Medici,
Grand Duke of Etruria, "apud quem extat ejus rudimentum ex plantis
libro agglutinatis a me compositum." And, throughout, he speaks with
the most familiar and vivid acquaintance of the various vegetables
which he describes.
[Note 52\16: Cuv. 187.]
But Cæsalpinus also possessed fixed and general views concerning the
relation and functions of the parts of plants, and ideas of symmetry
{377} and system; without which, as we see in other botanists of his
and succeeding times, the mere accumulation of a knowledge of
details does not lead to any advance in science. We have already
mentioned his reference to general philosophical principles, both of
the Peripatetics and of his own. The first twelve chapters of his
work are employed in explaining the general structure of plants, and
especially that point to which he justly attaches so much
importance, the results of the different situation of the _cor_ or
_corculum_ of the seed. He shows[53\16] that if we take the root, or
stem, or leaves, or blossom, as our guide in classification, we
shall separate plants obviously alike, and approximate those which
have merely superficial resemblances. And thus we see that he had in
his mind ideas of fixed resemblance and symmetrical distribution,
which he sedulously endeavored to apply to plants; while his
acquaintance with the vegetable kingdom enabled him to see in what
manner these ideas were not, and in what manner they were, really
applicable.
[Note 53\16: Lib. i. cap. xii.]
The great merit and originality of Cæsalpinus have been generally
allowed, by the best of the more modern writers on Botany. Linnæus
calls him one of the founders of the science; "Primus verus
systematicus;"[54\16] and, as if not satisfied with the expression
of his admiration in prose, hangs a poetical garland on the tomb of
his hero. The following distich concludes his remarks on this
writer:
Quisquis hic extiterit primos concedet honores
Cæsalpine tibi; primaque serta dabit:
and similar language of praise has been applied to him by the best
botanists up to Cuvier,[55\16] who justly terms his book "a work of
genius."
[Note 54\16: _Philosoph. Bot._ p. 19.]
[Note 55\16: Cuv. _Hist._ 193.]
Perhaps the great advance made in this science by Cæsalpinus, is
most strongly shown by this; that no one appeared, to follow the
path which he had opened to system and symmetry, for nearly a
century. Moreover, when the progress of this branch of knowledge was
resumed, his next successor, Morison, did not choose to acknowledge
that he had borrowed so much from so old a writer; and thus, hardly
mentions his name, although he takes advantage of his labors, and
even transcribes his words without acknowledgement, as I shall show.
The pause between the great invention of Cæsalpinus, and its natural
sequel, the developement and improvement of his method, is so
marked, that I {378} will, in order to avoid too great an
interruption of chronological order, record some of its
circumstances in a separate section.
_Sect._ 3.--_Stationary Interval._
THE method of Cæsalpinus was not, at first, generally adopted. It
had, indeed, some disadvantages. Employed in drawing the
boundary-lines of the larger divisions of the vegetable kingdom, he
had omitted those smaller groups, Genera, which were both most
obvious to common botanists, and most convenient in the description
and comparison of plants. He had also neglected to give the Synonyms
of other authors for the plants spoken of by him; an appendage to
botanical descriptions, which the increase of botanical information
and botanical books had now rendered indispensable. And thus it
happened, that a work, which must always be considered as forming a
great epoch in the science to which it refers, was probably little
read, and in a short time could be treated as if it were quite
forgotten.
In the mean time, the science was gradually improved in its details.
Clusius, or Charles de l'Ecluse, first taught botanists to describe
well. "Before him," says Mirbel,[56\16] "the descriptions were
diffuse, obscure, indistinct; or else concise, incomplete, vague.
Clusius introduced exactitude, precision, neatness, elegance,
method: he says nothing superfluous; he omits nothing necessary." He
travelled over great part of Europe, and published various works on
the more rare of the plants which he had seen. Among such plants, we
may note now one well known, the potato; which he describes as being
commonly used in Italy in 1586;[57\16] thus throwing doubt, at
least, on the opinion which ascribes the first introduction of it
into Europe to Sir Walter Raleigh, on his return from Virginia,
about the same period. As serving to illustrate, both this point,
and the descriptive style of Clusius, I quote, in a note, his
description of the flower of this plant.[58\16] {379}
[Note 56\16: _Physiol. Veg._ p. 525.]
[Note 57\16: Clusius. _Exotic_. iv. c. 52, p. lxxix.]
[Note 58\16: "Papas Peruanorum. Arachidna, Theoph. forte. Flores
elegantes, uncialis amplitudinis aut majores, angulosi, singulari
folio constantes, sed ita complicato ut quinque folia discreta
videantur, coloris exterius ex purpura candicantis, interius
purpurascentis, radiis quinque herbaceis ex umbilico stellæ instar
prodeuntibus, et totidem staminibus flavis in umbonem coeuntibus."
He says that the Italians do not know whence they had the plant, and
that they call it _Taratouffli_. The name _Potato_ was, in England,
previously applied to the Sweet Potato (_Convolvulus batatas_),
which was the _common_ Potato, in distinction to the _Virginian
_Potato, at the time of Gerard's Herbal. (1597?) Gerard's figures of
both plants are copied from those of Clusius.
It may be seen by the description of Arachidna, already quoted from
Theophrastus, (above,) that there is little plausibility in
Clusius's conjecture of the plant being known to the ancients. I
need not inform the botanist that this opinion is untenable.]
The addition of exotic species to the number of known plants was
indeed going on rapidly during the interval which we are now
considering. Francis Hernandez, a Spaniard, who visited America
towards the end of the sixteenth century, collected and described
many plants of that country, some of which were afterwards published
by Recchi.[59\16] Barnabas Cobo, who went as a missionary to America
in 1596, also described plants.[60\16] The Dutch, among other
exertions which they made in their struggle with the tyranny of
Spain, sent out an expedition which, for a time, conquered the
Brazils; and among other fruits of this conquest, they published an
account of the natural history of the country.[61\16] To avoid
interrupting the connexion of such labors, I will here carry them on
a little further in the order of time. Paul Herman, of Halle, in
Saxony, went to the Cape of Good Hope and to Ceylon; and on his
return, astonished the botanists of Europe by the vast quantity of
remarkable plants which he introduced to their knowledge.[62\16]
Rheede, the Dutch governor of Malabar, ordered descriptions and
drawings to be made of many curious species, which were published in
a large work in twelve folio volumes.[63\16] Rumphe, another Dutch
consul at Amboyna,[64\16] labored with zeal and success upon the
plants of the Moluccas. Some species which occur in Madagascar
figured in a description of that island composed by the French
Commandant Flacourt.[65\16] Shortly afterwards, Engelbert
Kæmpfer,[66\16] a Westphalian of great acquirements and undaunted
courage, visited Persia, Arabia Felix, the Mogul Empire, Ceylon,
Bengal, Sumatra, Java, Siam, Japan; Wheler travelled in Greece and
Asia Minor; and Sherard, the English consul, published an account of
the plants of the neighborhood of Smyrna. {380}
[Note 59\16: _Nova Plantarum Regni Mexicana Historia_, Rom. 1651,
fol.]
[Note 60\16: Sprengel, _Gesch. der Botanik_, ii. 62.]
[Note 61\16: _Historia Naturalis Brasiliæ_, L. B. 1648, fol. (Piso
and Maregraf).]
[Note 62\16: _Museum Zeylanicum_, L. B. 1726.]
[Note 63\16: _Hortus Malabaricus_, 1670-1703.]
[Note 64\16: _Herbarium Amboinense_, Amsterdam, 1741-51, fol.]
[Note 65\16: _Histoire de la grande Isle Madagascar_, Paris, 1661.]
[Note 66\16: _Amœnitates Exoticæ_, Lemgov. 1712. 4to.]
At the same time, the New World excited also the curiosity of
botanists. Hans Sloane collected the plants of Jamaica; John
Banister those of Virginia; William Vernon, also an Englishman, and
David Kriege, a Saxon, those of Maryland; two Frenchmen, Surian and
Father Plumier, those of Saint Domingo.
We may add that public botanical gardens were about this time
established all over Europe. We have already noticed the institution
of that of Pisa in 1543; the second was that of Padua in 1545; the
next, that of Florence in 1556; the fourth, that of Bologna, 1568;
that of Rome, in the Vatican, dates also from 1568.
The first transalpine garden of this kind arose at Leyden in 1577;
that of Leipzig in 1580. Henry the Fourth of France established one
at Montpellier in 1597. Several others were instituted in Germany;
but that of Paris did not begin to exist till 1626; that of Upsal,
afterwards so celebrated, took its rise in 1657, that of Amsterdam
in 1684. Morison, whom we shall soon have to mention, calls himself,
in 1680, the first Director of the Botanical Garden at Oxford.
[2nd Ed.] [To what is above said of Botanical Gardens and Botanical
Writers, between the times of Cæsalpinus and Morison, I may add a
few circumstances. The first academical garden in France was that at
Montpellier, which was established by Peter Richier de Belleval, at
the end of the sixteenth century. About the same period, rare
flowers were cultivated at Paris, and pictures of them made, in
order to supply the embroiderers of the court-robes with new
patterns. Thus figures of the most beautiful flowers in the garden
of Peter Robins were published by the court-embroiderer Peter
Vallet, in 1608, under the title of _Le Jardin du Roi Henry IV_. But
Robins' works were of great service to botany; and his garden
assisted the studies of Renealmus (Paul Reneaulme), whose _Specimen
Historiæ Plantarum_ (Paris, 1611), is highly spoken of by the best
botanists. Recently, Mr. Robert Brown has named after him a new
genus of _Irideæ_ (RENEALMIA); adding, "Dixi in memoriam PAULI
RENEALMI, botanici sui ævi accuratissimi, atque staminum primi
scrutatoris; qui non modo eorum numerum et situm, sed etiam
filamentorum proportionem passim descripsit, et characterem
tetradynamicum siliquosarum perspexit." (_Prodromus Floræ Novæ
Hollandiæ_, p. 448.)
The oldest Botanical Garden in England is that at Hampton Court,
founded by Queen Elizabeth, and much enriched by Charles II. and
William III. (Sprengel, _Gesch. d. Bot._ vol. ii. p. 96.)]
In the mean time, although there appeared no new system which {381}
commanded the attention of the botanical world, the feeling of the
importance of the affinities of plants became continually more
strong and distinct.
Lobel, who was botanist to James the First, and who published his
_Stirpium Adversaria Nova_ in 1571, brings together the natural
families of plants more distinctly than his predecessors, and even
distinguishes (as Cuvier states,[67\16]) monocotyledonous from
dicotyledonous plants; one of the most comprehensive division-lines
of botany, of which succeeding times discovered the value more
completely. Fabius Columna,[68\16] in 1616, gave figures of the
fructification of plants on copper, as Gessner had before done on
wood. But the elder Bauhin (John), notwithstanding all that
Cæsalpinus had done, retrograded, in a work published in 1619, into
the less precise and scientific distinctions of--trees with nuts;
with berries; with acorns; with pods; creeping plants, gourds, &c.:
and no clear progress towards a system was anywhere visible among
the authors of this period.
[Note 67\16: Cuv. _Leçons, &c._ 198.]
[Note 68\16: Ib. 206.]
While this continued to be the case, and while the materials, thus
destitute of order, went on accumulating, it was inevitable that the
evils which Cæsalpinus had endeavored to remedy, should become more
and more grievous. "The nomenclature of the subject[69\16] was in
such disorder, it was so impossible to determine with certainty the
plants spoken of by preceding writers, that thirty or forty
different botanists had given to the same plant almost as many
different names. Bauhin called by one appellation, a species which
Lobel or Matheoli designated by another. There was an actual chaos,
a universal confusion, in which it was impossible for men to find
their way." We can the better understand such a state of things,
from having, in our own time, seen another classificatory science,
Mineralogy, in the very condition thus described. For such a state
of confusion there is no remedy but the establishment of a true
system of classification; which by its real foundation renders a
reason for the place of each species; and which, by the fixity of
its classes, affords a basis for a standard nomenclature, as finally
took place in Botany. But before such a remedy is obtained, men
naturally try to alleviate the evil by tabulating the synonyms of
different writers, as far as they are able to do so. The task of
constructing such a _Synonymy_ of botany at the period of which we
speak, was undertaken by Gaspard Bauhin, the brother of John, but
nineteen years younger. This work, the _Pinax Theatri Botanici_, was
printed {382} at Basil in 1623. It was a useful undertaking at the
time; but the want of any genuine order in the _Pinax_ itself,
rendered it impossible that it should be of great permanent utility.
[Note 69\16: Ib. 212.]
After this period, the progress of almost all the sciences became
languid for a while; and one reason of this interruption was, the
wars and troubles which prevailed over almost the whole of Europe.
The quarrels of Charles the First and his parliament, the civil wars
and the usurpation, in England; in France, the war of the League,
the stormy reign of Henry the Fourth, the civil wars of the minority
of Louis the Thirteenth, the war against the Protestants and the war
of the Fronde in the minority of Louis the Fourteenth; the bloody
and destructive Thirty Years' War in Germany; the war of Spain with
the United Provinces and with Portugal;--all these dire agitations
left men neither leisure nor disposition to direct their best
thoughts to the promotion of science. The baser spirits were
brutalized; the better were occupied by high practical aims and
struggles of their moral nature. Amid such storms, the intellectual
powers of man could not work with their due calmness, nor his
intellectual objects shine with their proper lustre.
At length a period of greater tranquillity gleamed forth, and the
sciences soon expanded in the sunshine. Botany was not inert amid
this activity, and rapidly advanced in a new direction, that of
physiology; but before we speak of this portion of our subject, we
must complete what we have to say of it as a classificatory science.
_Sect._ 4.--_Sequel to the Epoch of Cæsalpinus. Further Formation
and Adoption of Systematic Arrangement._
SOON after the period of which we now speak, that of the restoration
of the Stuarts to the throne of England, systematic arrangements of
plants appeared in great numbers; and in a manner such as to show
that the minds of botanists had gradually been ripening for this
improvement, through the influence of preceding writers, and the
growing acquaintance with plants. The person whose name is usually
placed first on this list, Robert Morison, appears to me to be much
less meritorious than many of those who published very shortly after
him; but I will give him the precedence in my narrative. He was a
Scotchman, who was wounded fighting on the royalist side in the
civil wars of England. On the triumph of the republicans, he
withdrew to France, when he became director of the garden of Gaston,
Duke of Orléans at Blois; and there he came under the notice of our
Charles {383} the Second; who, on his restoration, summoned Morison
to England, where he became Superintendent of the Royal Gardens, and
also of the Botanic Garden at Oxford. In 1669, he published _Remarks
on the Mistakes of the two Bauhins_, in which he proves that many
plants in the _Pinax_ are erroneously placed, and shows considerable
talent for appreciating natural families and genera. His great
systematic work appeared from the University press at Oxford in
1680. It contains a system, but a system, Cuvier says,[70\16] which
approaches rather to a natural method than to a rigorous
distribution, like that of his predecessor Cæsalpinus, or that of
his successor Ray. Thus the herbaceous plants are divided into
_climbers_, _leguminous_, _siliquose_, _unicapsalar_, _bicapsular_,
_tricapsular_, _quadricapsular_, _quinquecapsular_; this division
being combined with characters derived from the number of petals.
But along with these numerical elements, are introduced others of a
loose and heterogeneous kind, for instance, the classification of
herbs as _lactescent_ and _emollient_. It is not unreasonable to
say, that such a scheme shows no talent for constructing a complete
system; and that the most distinct part of it, that dependent on the
fruit, was probably borrowed from Cæsalpinus. That this is so, we
have, I think, strong proof; for though Morison nowhere, I believe,
mentions Cæsalpinus, except in one place in a loose enumeration of
botanical writers,[71\16] he must have made considerable use of his
work. For he has introduced into his own preface a passage copied
literally[72\16] from the dedication of Cæsalpinus; which passage we
have already quoted (p. 374,) beginning, "Since all science consists
in the collection of similar, and the distinction of dissimilar
things." And that the mention of the original is not omitted by
accident, appears from this; that Morison appropriates also the
conclusion of the passage, which has a personal reference, "_Conatus
sum id præstare in universa plantarum historia, ut si quid pro
ingenii mei tenuitate in hujusmodi studio profecerim, ad communem
utilitatem proferrem._" That Morison, thus, at so long an interval
after the publication of the work of Cæsalpinus, borrowed from him
without acknowledgement, and adopted his system so as to mutilate
it, proves that he had neither the temper nor the talent of a
discoverer; and justifies us withholding from him the credit which
belongs to those, who, in his time, resumed the great undertaking of
constructing a vegetable system.
[Note 70\16: Cuv. _Leçons_, &c. p. 486.]
[Note 71\16: Pref. p. i.]
[Note 72\16: Ib. p. ii.]
Among those whose efforts in this way had the greatest and earliest
{384} influence, was undoubtedly our countryman, John Ray, who was
Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, at the same time with Isaac
Newton. But though Cuvier states[73\16] that Ray was the model of
the systematists during the whole of the eighteenth century, the
Germans claim a part of his merit for one of their countrymen,
Joachim Jung, of Lubeck, professor at Hamburg.[74\16] Concerning the
principles of this botanist, little was known during his life. But a
manuscript of his book was communicated[75\16] to Ray in 1660, and
from this time forwards, says Sprengel, there might be noticed in
the writings of Englishmen, those better and clearer views to which
Jung's principles gave birth. Five years after the death of Jung,
his _Doxoscopia Physica_ was published, in 1662; and in 1678, his
_Isagoge Phytoscopica_. But neither of these works was ever much
read; and even Linnæus, whom few things escaped which concerned
botany, had, in 1771, seen none of Jung's works.
[Note 73\16: _Leçons Hist. Sc._ p. 487.]
[Note 74\16: Sprengel, ii. 27.]
[Note 75\16: Ray acknowledges this in his _Index Plant. Agri
Cantab._ p. 87, and quotes from it the definition of _caulis_.]
I here pass over Jung's improvements of botanical language, and
speak only of those which he is asserted to have suggested in the
arrangement of plants. He examines, says Sprengel,[76\16] the value
of characters of species, which, he holds, must not be taken from
the thorns, nor from color, taste, smell, medicinal effects, time
and place of blossoming. He shows, in numerous examples, what plants
must be separated, though called by a common name, and what most be
united, though their names are several.
[Note 76\16: Sprengel, ii. 29.]
I do not see in this much that interferes with the originality of
Ray's method,[77\16] of which, in consequence of the importance
ascribed to it by Cuvier, as we have already seen, I shall give an
account, following that great naturalist.[78\16] I confine myself to
the ordinary plants, and omit the more obscure vegetables, as
mushrooms, mosses, ferns, and the like.
[Note 77\16: _Methodus Plantarum Nova_, 1682. _Historia Plantarum_,
1686.]
[Note 78\16: Cuv. _Leçons Hist. Sc._ 488.]
Such plants are _composite_ or _simple_. The _composite_ flowers are
those which contain many florets in the same _calyx_.[79\16] These
are subdivided according as they are composed altogether of complete
florets, {385} or of half florets, or of a centre of complete
florets, surrounded by a circumference or ray of demi-florets. Such
are the divisions of the _corymbiferæ_, or _compositæ_.
[Note 79\16: _Involucrum_, in modern terminology.]
In the _simple_ flowers, the seeds are _naked_, or in a _pericarp_.
Those with _naked_ seeds are arranged according to the number of the
seeds, which may be one, two, three, four, or more. If there is only
one, no subdivision is requisite: if there are two, Ray makes a
subdivision, according as the flower has five petals, or a continuous
corolla. Here we come to several natural families. Thus, the flowers
with two seeds and five petals are the _Umbelliferous_ plants; the
monopetalous flowers with two seeds are the _Stellatæ_. He founds the
division of four-seeded flowers on the circumstance of the leaves
being opposite, or alternate; and thus again, we have the natural
families of _Asperifoliæ_, as _Echium_, &c., which have the leaves
alternate, and the _Verticillatæ_, as _Salvia_, in which the leaves
are opposite. When the flower has more than four seeds, he makes no
subdivision.
So much for simple flowers with naked seeds. In those where the
seeds are surrounded by a _pericarp_, or fruit, this fruit is large,
soft, and fleshy, and the plants are _pomiferous_; or it is small
and juicy, and the fruit is a berry, as a Gooseberry.
If the fruit is not juicy, but _dry_, it is multiple or simple. If
it be simple, we have the _leguminose_ plants. If it be multiple,
the form of the flower is to be attended to. The flower may be
_monopetalous_, or _tetrapetalous_, or _pentapetalous_, or with
still _more_ divisions. The monopetalous may be _regular_ or
_irregular_; so may the tetrapetalous. The regular tetrapetalous
flowers are, for example, the _Cruciferæ_, as Stock and Cauliflower;
the irregular, are the _papilionaceous_ plants, Peas, Beans, and
Vetches; and thus we again come to natural families. The remaining
plants are divided in the same way, into those with _imperfect_, and
those with _perfect_, flowers. Those with _imperfect_ flowers are
the _Grasses_, the _Rushes_ (_Junci_), and the like; among those
with _perfect_ flowers, are the _Palmaceæ_, and the _Liliaceæ_.
We see that the division of plants is complete as a system; all
flowers must belong to one or other of the divisions. Fully to
explain the characters and further subdivisions of these families,
would be to write a treatise on botany; but it is easily seen that
they exhaust the subject as far as they go.
Thus Ray constructed his system partly on the fruit and partly on
the flower; or more properly, according to the expression of
Linnæus, {386} comparing his earlier with his later system, he began
by being a _fructicist_, and ended by being a _corollist_.[80\16]
[Note 80\16: Ray was a most industrious herbalizer, and I cannot
understand on what ground Mirbel asserts (_Physiol. Veg._, tom. ii.
p. 531,) that he was better acquainted with books than with plants.]
As we have said, a number of systems of arrangement of plants were
published about this time, some founded on the fruit, some on the
corolla, some on the calyx, and these employed in various ways.
Rivinus[81\16] (whose real name was Bachman,) classified by the
flower alone; instead of combining it with the fruit, as Ray had
done.[82\16] He had the further merit of being the first who
rejected the old division, of _woody_ and _herbaceous_ plants; a
division which, though at variance with any system founded upon the
structure of the plants was employed even by Tournefort, and only
finally expelled by Linnæus.
[Note 81\16: Cuv. _Leçons_, 491.]
[Note 82\16: _Historia Generalis ad rem Herbariam_, 1690.]
It would throw little light upon the history of botany, especially
for our purpose, to dwell on the peculiarities of these transitory
systems. Linnæus,[83\16] after his manner, has given a
classification of them. Rivinus, as we have just seen, was a
_corollist_, according to the regularity and number of the petals;
Hermann was a _fructicist_. Christopher Knaut[84\16] adopted the
system of Ray, but inverted the order of its parts; Christian Knaut
did nearly the same with regard to that of Rivinus, taking number
before regularity in the flower.[85\16]
[Note 83\16: _Philos. Bot._ p. 21.]
[Note 84\16: _Enumeratio Plantarum_, &c., 1687.]
[Note 85\16: Linn.]
Of the systems which prevailed previous to that of Linnæus,
Tournefort's was by far the most generally accepted. Joseph Pitton
de Tournefort was of a noble family in Provence, and was appointed
professor at the Jardin du Roi in 1683. His well-known travels in
the Levant are interesting on other subjects, as well as botany. His
_Institutio Rei Herbariæ_, published in 1700, contains his method,
which is that of a _corollist_. He is guided by the regularity or
irregularity of the flowers, by their form, and by the situation of
the receptacle of the seeds below the calyx, or within it. Thus his
classes are--those in which the flowers are _campaniform_, or
bell-shaped; those in which they are _infundibuliform_, or
funnel-shaped, as Tobacco; then the irregular flowers, as the
_Personatæ_, which resemble an ancient mask; the _Labiatæ_, with
their two lips; the _Cruciform_; the _Rosaceæ_, with flowers like a
rose; the _Umbelliferæ_; the _Caryophylleæ_, as the {387} Pink; the
_Liliaceæ_, with six petals, as the Tulip, Narcissus, Hyacinth,
Lily; the _Papilionaceæ_, which are leguminous plants, the flower of
which resembles a butterfly, as Peas and Beans; and finally, the
_Anomalous_, as Violet, Nasturtium, and others.
Though this system was found to be attractive, as depending, in an
evident way, on the most conspicuous part of the plant, the flower,
it is easy to see that it was much less definite than systems like
that of Rivinus, Hermann, and Ray, which were governed by number.
But Tournefort succeeded in giving to the characters of genera a
degree of rigor never before attained, and abstracted them in a
separate form. We have already seen that the reception of botanical
Systems has depended much on their arrangement into Genera.
Tournefort's success was also much promoted by the author inserting
in his work a figure of a flower and fruit belonging to each genus;
and the figures, drawn by Aubriet, were of great merit. The study of
botany was thus rendered easy, for it could be learned by turning
over the leaves of a book. In spite of various defects, these
advantages gave this writer an ascendancy which lasted, from 1700,
when his book appeared, for more than half a century. For though
Linnæus began to publish in 1735, his method and his nomenclature
were not generally adopted till 1760.
CHAPTER IV.
THE REFORM OF LINNÆUS.
_Sect._ 1.--_Introduction of the Reform._
ALTHOUGH, perhaps, no man of science ever exercised a greater sway
than Linnæus, or had more enthusiastic admirers, the most
intelligent botanists always speak of him, not as a great
discoverer, but as a judicious and strenuous _Reformer_. Indeed, in
his own lists of botanical writers, he places himself among the
"Reformatores;" and it is apparent that this is the nature of his
real claim to admiration; for the doctrine of the sexes of plants,
even if he had been the first to establish it, was a point of
botanical physiology, a province of the {388} science which no one
would select as the peculiar field of Linnæus's glory; and the
formation of a system of arrangement on the basis of this doctrine,
though attended with many advantages, was not an improvement of any
higher order than those introduced by Ray and Tournefort. But as a
Reformer of the state of Natural History in his time, Linnæus was
admirable for his skill, and unparalleled in his success. And we
have already seen, in the instance of the reform of mineralogy, as
attempted by Mohs and Berzelius, that men of great talents and
knowledge may fail in such an undertaking.
It is, however, only by means of the knowledge which he displays,
and of the beauty and convenience of the improvements which he
proposes, that any one can acquire such an influence as to procure
his suggestions to be adopted. And even if original circumstances of
birth or position could invest any one with peculiar prerogatives
and powers in the republic of science, Karl Linné began his career
with no such advantages. His father was a poor curate in Smaland, a
province of Sweden; his boyhood was spent in poverty and privation;
it was with great difficulty that, at the age of twenty-one, he
contrived to subsist at the University of Upsal, whither a strong
passion for natural history had urged him. Here, however, he was so
far fortunate, that Olaus Rudbeck, the professor of botany,
committed to him the care of the Botanic Garden.[86\16] The perusal
of the works of Vaillant and Patrick Blair suggested to him the idea
of an arrangement of plants, formed upon the sexual organs, the
stamens and pistils; and of such an arrangement he published a
sketch in 1731, at the age of twenty-four.
[Note 86\16: Sprengel, ii. 232.]
But we must go forwards a few years in his life, to come to the
period to which his most important works belong. University and
family quarrels induced him to travel; and, after various changes of
scene, he was settled in Holland, as the curator of the splendid
botanical garden of George Clifford, an opulent banker. Here it
was[87\16] that he laid the foundation of his future greatness. In
the two years of his residence at Harlecamp, he published nine
works. The first, the _Systema Naturæ_, which contained a
comprehensive sketch of the whole domain of Natural History, excited
general astonishment, by the acuteness of the observations, the
happy talent of combination, and the clearness of the systematic
views. Such a work could not fail to procure considerable respect
for its author. His _Hortus Cliffortiana_ {389} and _Musa
Cliffortiana_ added to this impression. The weight which he had thus
acquired, he proceeded to use for the improvement of botany. His
_Fundamenta Botanica_ and _Bibliotheca Botanica_ appeared in 1736;
his _Critica Botanica_ and _Genera Plantarum_ in 1737; his _Classes
Plantarum_ in 1738; his _Species Plantarum_ was not published till
1753; and all these works appeared in many successive editions,
materially modified.
[Note 87\16: Ibid. 234.]
This circulation of his works showed that his labors were producing
their effect. His reputation grew; and he was soon enabled to exert
a personal, as well as a literary, influence, on students of natural
history. He became Botanist Royal, President of the Academy of
Sciences at Stockholm, and Professor in the University of Upsal; and
this office he held for thirty-six years with unrivalled credit;
exercising, by means of his lectures, his constant publications, and
his conversation, an extraordinary power over a multitude of zealous
naturalists, belonging to every part of the world.
In order to understand more clearly the nature and effect of the
reforms introduced by Linnæus into botany, I shall consider them
under the four following heads;--_Terminology_, _Nomenclature_,
_Artificial System_, and _Natural System_.
_Sect._ 2.--_Linnæan Reform of Botanical Terminology._
IT must be recollected that I designate as _Terminology_, the system
of _terms_ employed in the _description_ of objects of natural
history; while by _Nomenclature_, I mean the collection of the
_names_ of _species_. The reform of the descriptive part of botany
was one of the tasks first attempted by Linnæus; and his terminology
was the instrument by which his other improvements were effected.
Though most readers, probably, entertain, at first, a persuasion
that a writer ought to content himself with the use of common words
in their common sense, and feel a repugnance to technical terms and
arbitrary rules of phraseology, as pedantic and troublesome; it is
soon found, by the student of any branch of science that, without
technical terms and fixed rules, there can be no certain or
progressive knowledge. The loose and infantine grasp of common
language cannot hold objects steadily enough for scientific
examination, or lift them from one stage of generalization to
another. They must be secured by the rigid mechanism of a scientific
phraseology. This necessity had been felt in all the sciences, from
the earliest periods of their progress. But the {390} conviction had
never been acted upon so as to produce a distinct and adequate
descriptive botanical language. Jung, indeed,[88\16] had already
attempted to give rules and precepts which should answer this
purpose; but it was not till the _Fundamenta Botanica_ appeared,
that the science could be said to possess a fixed and complete
terminology.
[Note 88\16: _Isagoge Phytoscopica_, 1679.]
To give an account of such a terminology, is, in fact, to give a
description of a dictionary and grammar, and is therefore what
cannot here be done in detail. Linnæus's work contains about a
thousand terms of which the meaning and application are distinctly
explained; and rules are given, by which, in the use of such terms,
the botanist may avoid all obscurity, ambiguity, unnecessary
prolixity and complexity, and even inelegance and barbarism. Of
course the greater part of the words which Linnæus thus recognized
had previously existed in botanical writers; and many of them had
been defined with technical precision. Thus Jung[89\16] had already
explained what was a _composite_, what a _pinnate_ leaf; what kind
of a bunch of flowers is a _spike_, a _panicle_, an _umbel_, a
_corymb_, respectively. Linnæus extended such distinctions,
retaining complete clearness in their separation. Thus, with him,
composite leaves are further distinguished as _digitate_, _pinnate_,
_bipinnate_, _pedate_, and so on; pinnate leaves are _abruptly_ so,
or _with an odd_ one, or _with a tendril_; they are pinnate
_oppositely_, _alternately_, _interruptedly_, _articulately_,
_decursively_. Again, the _inflorescence_, as the mode of assemblage
of the flowers is called, may be a _tuft_ (fasciculus), a _head_
(capitulum), a _cluster_ (racemus), a _bunch_ (thyrsus), a
_panicle_, a _spike_, a _catkin_ (amentum), a _corymb_, an _umbel_,
a _cyme_, a _whorl_ (verticillus). And the rules which he gives,
though often apparently arbitrary and needless, are found, in
practice, to be of great service by their fixity and connexion. By
the good fortune of having had a teacher with so much delicacy of
taste as Linnæus, in a situation of so much influence, Botany
possesses a descriptive language which will long stand as a model
for all other subjects.
[Note 89\16: Sprengel, ii. 28.]
It may, perhaps, appear to some persons, that such a terminology as
we have here described must be enormously cumbrous; and that, since
the terms are arbitrarily invested with their meaning, the invention
of them requires no knowledge of nature. With respect to the former
doubt, we may observe, that technical description is, in reality,
the only description which is clearly intelligible; but that
technical language cannot be understood without being learnt as any
other {391} language is learnt; that is, the reader must connect the
terms immediately with his own sensations and notions, and not
mediately, through a verbal explanation; he must not have to guess
their meaning, or to discover it by a separate act of interpretation
into more familiar language as often as they occur. The language of
botany must be the botanist's most familiar tongue. When the student
has thus learnt to _think_ in botanical language, it is no idle
distinction to tell him that a _bunch_ of grapes is not a _cluster_;
that is, a _thyrsus_ not a _raceme_. And the terminology of botany
is then felt to be a useful implement, not an oppressive burden. It
is only the schoolboy that complains of the irksomeness of his
grammar and vocabulary. The accomplished student possesses them
without effort or inconvenience.
As to the other question, whether the construction of such a botanical
grammar and vocabulary implies an extensive and accurate acquaintance
with the facts of nature, no one can doubt who is familiar with any
descriptive science. It is true, that a person might construct an
arbitrary scheme of distinctions and appellations, with no attention
to natural objects; and this is what shallow and self-confident
persons often set about doing, in some branch of knowledge with which
they are imperfectly acquainted. But the slightest attempt to use such
a phraseology leads to confusion; and any continued use of it leads to
its demolition. Like a garment which does not fit us, if we attempt to
work in it we tear it in pieces.
The formation of a good descriptive language is, in fact, an
inductive process of the same kind as those which we have already
noticed in the progress of natural history. It requires the
_discovery of fixed characters_, which discovery is to be marked and
fixed, like other inductive steps, by appropriate _technical terms_.
The characters must be so far fixed, that the things which they
connect must have a more permanent and real association than the
things which they leave unconnected. If one bunch of grapes were
really a racemus, and another a thyrsus, according to the definition
of these terms, this part of the Linnæan language would lose its
value; because it would no longer enable us to assert a general
proposition with respect to one kind of plants.
_Sect._ 3.--_Linnæan Reform of Botanical Nomenclature._
IN the ancient writers each recognized kind of plants had a distinct
name. The establishment of Genera led to the practice of designating
{392} Species by the name of the genus, with the addition of a
"phrase" to distinguish the species. These phrases, (expressed in
Latin in the ablative case,) were such as not only to mark, but to
describe the species, and were intended to contain such features of
the plant as were sufficient to distinguish it from others of the
same genus. But in this way the designation of a plant often became
a long and inconvenient assemblage of words. Thus different kinds of
Rose were described as,
Rosa campestris, spinis carens, biflora (_Rosa alpina_.)
Rosa aculeata, foliis odoratis subtus rubiginosis (_R. eglanteria_.)
Rosa carolina fragrans, foliis medio tenus serratis (_R. carolina_.)
Rosa sylvestris vulgaris, flore odorato incarnato (_R. canina_.)
And several others. The prolixity of these appellations, their
variety in every different author, the insufficiency and confusion
of the distinctions which they contained, were felt as extreme
inconveniences. The attempt of Bauhin to remedy this evil by a
Synonymy, had, as we have seen, failed at the time, for want of any
directing principle; and was become still more defective by the
lapse of years and the accumulation of fresh knowledge and new
books. Haller had proposed to distinguish the species of each genus
by the numbers 1, 2, 3, and so on; but botanists found that their
memory could not deal with such arbitrary abstractions. The need of
some better nomenclature was severely felt.
The remedy which Linnæus finally introduced was the use of _trivial_
names; that is, the designation of each species by the name of the
genus along with a _single_ conventional word, imposed without any
general rule. Such names are added above in parentheses, to the
specimens of the names previously in use. But though this remedy was
found to be complete and satisfactory, and is now universally
adopted in every branch of natural history, it was not one of the
reforms which Linnæus at first proposed. Perhaps he did not at first
see its full value; or, if he did, we may suppose that it required
more self-confidence than he possessed, to set himself to introduce
and establish ten thousand new names in the botanical world.
Accordingly, the first attempts of Linnæus at the improvement of the
nomenclature of botany were, the proposal of fixed and careful rules
for the generic name, and for the descriptive phrase. Thus, in his
_Critica Botanica_, he gives many precepts concerning the selection
of the names of {393} genera, intended to secure convenience or
elegance. For instance, that they are to be single words;[90\16] he
substitutes _atropa_ for _bella donna_, and _leontodon_ for _dens
leonis_; that they are not to depend upon the name of another
genus,[91\16] as _acriviola_, _agrimonoides_; that they are
not[92\16] to be "sesquipedalia;" and, says he, any word is
sesquipedalian to me, which has more than twelve letters, as
_kalophyllodendron_, for which he substitutes _calophyllon_. Though
some of these rules may seem pedantic, there is no doubt that, taken
altogether, they tend exceedingly, like the labors of purists in
other languages, to exclude extravagance, caprice, and barbarism in
botanical speech.
[Note 90\16: _Phil. Bot._ 224.]
[Note 91\16: Ib. 228, 229.]
[Note 92\16: Ib. 252.]
The precepts which he gives for the matter of the "descriptive
phrase," or, as it is termed in the language of the Aristotelian
logicians, the "differentia," are, for the most part, results of the
general rule, that the most fixed characters which can be found are
to be used; this rule being interpreted according to all the
knowledge of plants which had then been acquired. The language of
the rules was, of course, to be regulated by the terminology, of
which we have already spoken.
Thus, in the _Critica Botanica_, the name of a plant is considered
as consisting of a generic word and a specific phrase; and these
are, he says,[93\16] the right and left hands of the plant. But he
then speaks of another kind of name; the _trivial_ name, which is
opposed to the scientific. Such names were, he says,[94\16] those of
his predecessors, and especially of the most ancient of them.
Hitherto[95\16] no rules had been given for their use. He
manifestly, at this period, has small regard for them. "Yet," he
says, "trivial names may, perhaps, be used on this account,--that
the _differentia_ often turns out too long to be convenient in
common use, and may require change as new species are discovered.
However," he continues, "in this work we set such names aside
altogether, and attend only to the _differentiæ_."
[Note 93\16: Ib. 266.]
[Note 94\16: Ib. 261.]
[Note 95\16: Ib. 260.]
Even in the _Species Plantarum_, the work which gave general
currency to these trivial names, he does not seem to have yet dared
to propose so great a novelty. They only stand in the margin of the
work. "I have placed them there," he says in his Preface, "that,
without circumlocution, we may call every herb by a single name; I
have done this without selection, which would require more time. And
I beseech all sane botanists to avoid most religiously ever {394}
proposing a trivial name without a sufficient specific distinction,
lest the science should fall into its former barbarism."
It cannot be doubted, that the general reception of these trivial
names of Linnæus, as the current language among botanists, was due, in
a very great degree, to the knowledge, care, and skill with which his
characters, both of genera and of species, were constructed. The
rigorous rules of selection and expression which are proposed in the
_Fundamenta Botanica_ and _Critica Botanica_, he himself conformed to;
and this scrupulosity was employed upon the results of immense labor.
"In order that I might make myself acquainted with the species of
plants," he says, in the preface to his work upon them, "I have
explored the Alps of Lapland, the whole of Sweden, a part of Norway,
Denmark, Germany, Belgium, England, France: I have examined the
Botanical Gardens of Paris, Oxford, Chelsea, Harlecamp, Leyden,
Utrecht, Amsterdam, Upsal, and others: I have turned over the Herbals
of Burser, Hermann, Clifford, Burmann, Oldenland, Gronovius, Royer,
Sloane, Sherard, Bobart, Miller, Tournefort, Vaillant, Jussieu,
**Surian, Beck, Brown, &c.: my dear disciples have gone to distant
lands, and sent me plants from thence; Kerlen to Canada, Hasselquist
to Egypt, Asbech to China, Toren to Surat, Solander to England,
Alstrœmer to Southern Europe, Martin to Spitzbergen, Pontin to
Malabar, Kœhler to Italy, Forskähl to the East, Lœfling to Spain,
Montin to Lapland: my botanical friends have sent me many seeds and
dried plants from various countries: Lagerström many from the East
Indies; Gronovius most of the Virginian; Gmelin all the Siberian;
Burmann those of the Cape." And in consistency with this habit of
immense collection of materials, is his maxim,[96\16] that "a person
is a better botanist in proportion as he knows more species." It will
easily be seen that this maxim, like Newton's declaration that
discovery requires patient thought alone, refers only to the exertions
of which the man of genius is conscious; and leaves out of sight his
peculiar endowments, which he does not see because they are part of
his power of vision. With the taste for symmetry which dictated the
_Critica Botanica_, and the talent for classification which appears in
the _Genera Plantarum_, and the _Systema Naturæ_, a person must
undoubtedly rise to higher steps of classificatory knowledge and
skill, as he became acquainted with a greater number of facts.
[Note 96\16: _Phil. Bot._ 259.]
The acknowledged superiority of Linnæus in the knowledge of the
{395} matter of his science, induced other persons to defer to him
in what concerned its form; especially when his precepts were, for
the most part, recommended strongly both by convenience and
elegance. The trivial names of the _Species Plantarum_ were
generally received; and though some of the details may have been
altered, the immense advantage of the scheme ensures its permanence.
_Sect._ 4.--_Linnæus's Artificial System._
WE have already seen, that, from the time of Cæsalpinus, botanists
had been endeavoring to frame a systematic arrangement of plants.
All such arrangements were necessarily both artificial and natural:
they were _artificial_, inasmuch as they depended upon assumed
principles, the number, form, and position of certain parts, by the
application of which the whole vegetable kingdom was imperatively
subdivided; they were _natural_, inasmuch as the justification of
this division was, that it brought together those plants which were
naturally related. No system of arrangement, for instance, would
have been tolerated which, in a great proportion of cases, separated
into distant parts of the plan the different species of the same
genus. As far as the main body of the genera, at least, all systems
are natural.
But beginning from this line, we may construct our systems with two
opposite purposes, according as we endeavor to carry our assumed
principle of division rigorously and consistently through the
system, or as we wish to associate natural families of a wider kind
than genera. The former propensity leads to an artificial, the
latter to a natural method. Each is a _System of Plants_; but in the
first, the emphasis is thrown on the former word of the title, in
the other, on the latter.
The strongest recommendation of an artificial system, (besides its
approaching to a natural method,) is, that it shall be capable of
easy use; for which purpose, the facts on which it depends must be
apparent in their relations, and universal in their occurrence. The
system of Linnæus, founded upon the number, position, and other
circumstances of the stamina and pistils, the reproductive organs of
the plants, possessed this merit in an eminent degree, as far as
these characters are concerned; that is, as far as the classes and
orders. In its further subdivision into genera, its superiority was
mainly due to the exact observation and description, which we have
already had to notice as talents which Linnæus peculiarly possessed.
The Linnæan system of plants was more definite than that of {396}
Tournefort, which was governed by the corolla; for number is more
definite than irregular form. It was more readily employed than any
of those which depend on the fruit, for the flower is a more obvious
object, and more easily examined. Still, it can hardly be doubted,
that the circumstance which gave the main currency to the system of
Linnæus was its physiological signification: it was the _Sexual
System_. The relation of the parts to which it directed the
attention, interested both the philosophical faculty and the
imagination. And when, soon after the system had become familiar in
our own country, the poet of _The Botanic Garden_ peopled the bell
of every flower with "Nymphs" and "Swains," his imagery was felt to
be by no means forced and far-fetched.
The history of the doctrine of the sexes of plants, as a point of
physiology, does not belong to this place; and the Linnæan system of
classification need not be longer dwelt upon for our present
purpose. I will only explain a little further what has been said,
that it is, up to a certain point, a natural system. Several of
Linnæus's classes are, in a great measure, natural associations,
kept together in violation of his own artificial rules. Thus the
class _Diadelphia_, in which, by the system, the filaments of the
stamina should be bound together in two parcels, does, in fact,
contain many genera which are_ monadelphous_, the filaments of the
stamina all cohering so as to form one bundle only; as in _Genista_,
_Spartium_, _Anthyllis_, _Lupinus_, &c. And why is this violation of
rule? Precisely because these genera all belong to the natural tribe
of Papilionaceous plants, which the author of the system could not
prevail upon himself to tear asunder. Yet in other cases Linnæus was
true to his system, to the injury of natural alliances, as he was,
for instance, in another portion of this very tribe of
_Papilionaceæ_; for there are plants which undoubtedly belong to the
tribe, but which have ten separate stamens; and these he placed in
the order _Decandria_. Upon the whole, however, he inclines rather
to admit transgression of art than of nature.
The reason of this inclination was, that he rightly considered an
artificial method as instrumental to the investigation of a natural
one; and to this part of his views we now proceed.
_Sect._ 5.--_Linnæus's Views on a Natural Method._
THE admirers of Linnæus, the English especially, were for some time
in the habit of putting his Sexual System in opposition to the
Natural Method, which about the same time was attempted in France.
And {397} as they often appear to have imagined that the ultimate
object of botanical methods was to know the name of plants, they
naturally preferred the Swedish method, which is excellent as a
_finder_. No person, however, who wishes to know botany as a
science, that is, as a body of general truths, can be content with
making names his ultimate object. Such a person will be constantly
and irresistibly led on to attempt to catch sight of the natural
arrangement of plants, even before he discovers, as he will discover
by pursuing such a course of study, that the knowledge of the
natural arrangement is the knowledge of the essential construction
and vital mechanism of plants. He will consider an artificial method
as a means of arriving at a natural method. Accordingly, however
much some of his followers may have overlooked this, it is what
Linnæus himself always held and taught. And though what he executed
with regard to this object was but little,[97\16] the distinct
manner in which he presented the relations of an artificial and
natural method, may justly be looked upon as one of the great
improvements which he introduced into the study of his science.
[Note 97\16: The natural orders which he proposed are a bare
enumeration of genera, and have not been generally followed.]
Thus in the _Classes Plantarum_ (1747), he speaks of the difficulty of
the task of discovering the natural orders, and of the attempts made
by others. "Yet," he adds, "I too have labored at this, have done
something, have much still to do, and shall labor at the object as
long as I live." He afterwards proposed sixty-seven orders, as the
fragments of a natural method, always professing their
imperfection.[98\16] And in others of his works[99\16] he lays down
some antitheses on the subject after his manner. "The natural orders
teach us the nature of plants; the artificial orders enable us to
recognize plants. The natural orders, without a key, do not constitute
a Method; the Method ought to be available without a master."
[Note 98\16: _Phil. Bot._ p. 80.]
[Note 99\16: _Genera Plantarum_, 1764. See _Prælect. in Ord. Nat._
p. xlviii.]
That extreme difficulty must attend the formation of a Natural Method,
may be seen from the very indefinite nature of the Aphorisms upon this
subject which Linnæus has delivered, and which the best botanists of
succeeding times have assented to. Such are these;--the Natural Orders
must be formed by attention, not to one or two, but to _all_ the parts
of plants;--the same organs are of great importance in regulating the
divisions of one part of the system, and {398} of small importance in
another part;[100\16]--the Character does not constitute the Genus,
but the Genus the Character;--the Character is necessary, not to make
the Genus, but to recognize it. The vagueness of these maxims is
easily seen; the rule of attending to all the parts, implies, that we
are to estimate their relative importance, either by physiological
considerations (and these again lead to arbitrary rules, as, for
instance, the superiority of the function of nutrition to that of
reproduction), or by a sort of latent naturalist instinct, which
Linnæus in some passages seems to recognize. "The Habit of a plant,"
he says,[101\16] "must be secretly consulted. A practised botanist
will distinguish, at the first glance, the plants of different
quarters of the globe, and yet will be at a loss to tell by what mark
he detects them. There is, I know not what look,--sinister, dry,
obscure in African plants; superb and elevated, in the Asiatic; smooth
and cheerful, in the American; stunted and indurated, in the Alpine."
[Note 100\16: _Phil. Bot._ p. 172.]
[Note 101\16: Ib. p. 171.]
Again, the rule that the same parts are of very different value in
different Orders, not only leaves us in want of rules or reasons
which may enable us to compare the marks of different Orders, but
destroys the systematic completeness of the natural arrangement. If
some of the Orders be regulated by the flower and others by the
fruit, we may have plants, of which the flower would place them in
one Order, and the fruit in another. The answer to this difficulty
is the maxim already stated;--that no Character _makes_ the Order;
and that if a Character do not enable us to recognize the Order, it
does not answer its purpose, and ought to be changed for another.
This doctrine, that the Character is to be employed as a servant and
not as a master, was a stumbling-block in the way of those disciples
who looked only for dogmatical and universal rules. One of Linnæus's
pupils, Paul Dietrich Giseke, has given us a very lively account of
his own perplexity on having this view propounded to him, and of the
way in which he struggled with it. He had complained of the want of
intelligible grounds, in the collection of natural orders given by
Linnæus. Linnæus[102\16] wrote in answer, "You ask me for the
characters of the Natural Orders: I confess I cannot give them."
Such a reply naturally increased Giseke's difficulties. But
afterwards, in 1771, he had the good fortune to spend some time at
Upsal; and he narrates a conversation which he held with the great
{399} teacher on this subject, and which I think may serve to show
the nature of the difficulty;--one by no means easily removed, and
by the general reader, not even readily comprehended with
distinctness. Giseke began by conceiving that an Order _must_ have
that attribute from which its name is derived;--that the _Umbellatæ_
must have their flower disposed in an umbel. The "mighty master"
smiled,[103\16] and told him not to look at names, but at nature.
"But" (said the pupil) "what is the use of the name, if it does not
mean what it professes to mean?" "It is of small import" (replied
Linnæus) "_what_ you _call_ the Order, if you take a proper series
of plants and give it some name, which is clearly understood to
apply to the plants which you have associated. In such cases as you
refer to, I followed the logical rule, of borrowing a name _a
potiori_, from the principal member. Can you" (he added) "give me
the character of any single Order?" _Giseke._ "Surely, the character
of the _Umbellatæ_ is, that they have an umbel?" _Linnæus._ "Good;
but there are plants which have an umbel, and are not of the
_Umbellatæ_." _G._ "I remember. We must therefore add, that they
have two naked seeds." _L._ "Then, _Echinophora_, which has only one
seed, and _Eryngium_, which has not an umbel, will not be
_Umbellatæ_; and yet they are of the Order." _G._ "I would place
_Eryngium_ among the _Aggregatæ_. _L._ "No; both are beyond dispute
_Umbellatæ_. _Eryngium_ has an involucrum, five stamina, two
pistils, &c. Try again for your Character." _G._ "I would transfer
such plants to the end of the Order, and make them form the
transition to the next Order. _Eryngium_ would connect the
_Umbellatæ_ with the _Aggregatæ_." _L._ "Ah! my good friend, the
_Transition_ from Order to Order is one thing; the _Character_ of an
Order is another. The Transitions I could indicate; but a Character
of a Natural Order is impossible. I will not give my reasons for the
distribution of Natural Orders which I have published. You or some
other person, after twenty or after fifty years, will discover them,
and see I was in the right."
[Note 102\16: _Linnæi Prælectiones_, Pref. p. xv.]
[Note 103\16: "Subrisit ὁ πανυ."]
I have given a portion of this curious conversation in order to show
that the attempt to establish Natural Orders leads to convictions
which are out of the domain of the systematic grounds on which they
profess to proceed. I believe the real state of the case to be that
the systematist, in such instances, is guided by an unformed and
undeveloped apprehension of physiological functions. The ideas of
the form, {400} number, and figure of parts are, in some measure,
overshadowed and superseded by the rising perception of organic and
vital relations; and the philosopher who aims at a Natural Method,
while he is endeavoring merely to explore the apartment in which he
had placed himself, that of Arrangement, is led beyond it, to a
point where another light begins, though dimly, to be seen; he is
brought within the influence of the ideas of Organization and Life.
The sciences which depend on these ideas will be the subject of our
consideration hereafter. But what has been said may perhaps serve to
explain the acknowledged and inevitable imperfection of the
unphysiological Linnæan attempts towards a natural method.
"Artificial Glasses are," Linnæus says, "a substitute for Natural,
till Natural are detected." But we have not yet a Natural Method.
"Nor," he says, in the conversation above cited, "can we have a
Natural Method; for a Natural Method implies Natural Classes and
Orders; and these Orders must have Characters." "And they," he adds
in another place,[104\16] "who, though they cannot obtain a complete
Natural Method, arrange plants according to the fragments of such a
method, to the rejection of the Artificial, seem to me like persons
who pull down a convenient vaulted room, and set about building
another, though they cannot turn the vault which is to cover it."
[Note 104\16: _Gen. Plant. in Prælect._ p. xii.]
How far these considerations deterred other persons from turning
their main attention to a natural method, we shall shortly see; but
in the mean time, we must complete the history of the Linnæan Reform.
_Sect._ 6.--_Reception and Diffusion of the Linnæan Reform._
WE have already seen that Linnæus received, from his own country,
honors and emoluments which mark his reputation as established, as
early as 1740; and by his publications, his lectures, and his
personal communications, he soon drew round him many disciples, whom
he impressed strongly with his own doctrines and methods. It would
seem that the sciences of classification tend, at least in modern
times more than other sciences, to collect about the chair of the
teacher a large body of zealous and obedient pupils; Linnæus and
Werner were by far the most powerful heads of schools of any men who
appeared in the course of the last century. Perhaps one reason of
this is, that in these sciences, consisting of such an enormous
multitude of species, of descriptive {401} particulars, and of
previous classifications, the learner is dependent upon the teacher
more completely, and for a longer time than in other subjects of
speculation: he cannot so soon or so easily cast off the aid and
influence of the master, to pursue reasonings and hypotheses of his
own. Whatever the cause may be, the fact is, that the reputation and
authority of Linnæus, in the latter part of his life, were immense.
He enjoyed also royal favor, for the King and Queen of Sweden were
both fond of natural history. In 1753, Linnæus received from the
hand of his sovereign the knighthood of the Polar Star, an honor
which had never before been conferred for literary merit; and in
1756, was raised to the rank of Swedish nobility by the title of Von
Linné; and this distinction was confirmed by the Diet in 1762. He
lived, honored and courted, to the age of seventy-one; and in 1778
was buried in the cathedral of Upsal, with many testimonials of
public respect and veneration.
De Candolle[105\16] assigns, as the causes of the successes of the
Linnæan system,--the specific names,--the characteristic
phrase,--the fixation of descriptive language,--the distinction of
varieties and species,--the extension of the method to all the
kingdoms of nature,--and the practice of introducing into it the
species most recently discovered. This last course Linnæus
constantly pursued; thus making his works the most valuable for
matter, as they were the most convenient in form. The general
diffusion of his methods over Europe may be dated, perhaps, a few
years after 1760, when the tenth and the succeeding editions of the
_Systema Naturæ_ were in circulation, professing to include every
species of organized beings. But his pupils and correspondents
effected no less than his books, in giving currency to his system.
In Germany,[106\16] it was defended by Ludwig, Gesner, Fabricius.
But Haller, whose reputation in physiology was as great as that of
Linnæus in methodology, rejected it as too merely artificial. In
France, it did not make any rapid or extensive progress: the best
French botanists were at this time occupied with the solution of the
great problem of the construction of a Natural Method. And though
the rhetorician Rousseau charmed, we may suppose, with the elegant
precision of the _Philosophia Botanica_, declared it to be the most
philosophical work he had ever read in his life, Buffon and
Andanson, describers and philosophers of a more ambitious school,
felt a repugnance to the rigorous rules, and limited, but finished,
undertakings of the Swedish naturalist. To resist his {402} criticism
and his influence, they armed themselves with dislike and contempt.
[Note 105\16: _Théor. Elém._ p. 40.]
[Note 106\16: Sprengel, ii. 244.]
In England the Linnæan system was very favorably received:--perhaps
the more favorably, for being a strictly artificial system. For the
indefinite and unfinished form which almost inevitably clings to a
natural method, appears to be peculiarly distasteful to our
countrymen. It might seem as if the suspense and craving which comes
with knowledge confessedly incomplete were so disagreeable to them,
that they were willing to avoid it, at any rate whatever; either by
rejecting system altogether, or by accepting a dogmatical system
without reserve. The former has been their course in recent times with
regard to Mineralogy; the latter was their proceeding with respect to
the Linnæan Botany. It is in this country alone, I believe, that
_Wernerian_ and _Linnæan_ Societies have been instituted. Such
appellations somewhat remind us of the Aristotelian and Platonic
schools of ancient Greece. In the same spirit it was, that the
Artificial System was at one time here considered, not as subsidiary
and preparatory to the Natural Orders, but as opposed to them. This
was much as if the disposition of an army in a review should be
considered as inconsistent with another arrangement of it in a battle.
When Linnæus visited England in 1736, Sloane, then the patron of
natural history in this country, is said to have given him a cool
reception, such as was perhaps most natural from an old man to a
young innovator; and Dillenius, the Professor at Oxford, did not
accept the sexual system. But as Pulteney, the historian of English
Botany, says, when his works became known, "the simplicity of the
classical characters, the uniformity of the generic notes, all
confined to the parts of the fructification, and the precision which
marked the specific distinctions, merits so new, soon commanded the
assent of the unprejudiced."
Perhaps the progress of the introduction of the Linnæan System into
England will be best understood from the statement of T. Martyn, who
was Professor of Botany in the University of Cambridge, from 1761 to
1825. "About the year 1750," he says,[107\16] "I was a pupil of the
school of our great countryman Ray; but the rich vein of knowledge,
the profoundness and precision, which I remarked everywhere in the
_Philosophia Botanica_, (published in 1751,) withdrew me from my
first master, and I became a decided convert to that system of
botany which has since been generally received. In 1753, the
_Species_ {403} _Plantarum_, which first introduced the specific
names, made me a Linnæan completely." In 1763, he introduced the
system in his lectures at Cambridge, and these were the first
Linnæan lectures in England. Stillingfleet had already, in 1757, and
Lee, in 1760, called the attention of English readers to Linnæus.
Sir J. Hill, (the king's gardener at Kew,) in his _Flora
Britannica_, published in 1760, had employed the classes and generic
characters, but not the nomenclature; but the latter was adopted by
Hudson, in 1762, in the _Flora Anglica_.
[Note 107\16: Pref. to _Language of Botany_, 3rd edit. 1807.]
Two young Swedes, pupils of Linnæus, Dryander and Solander, settled in
England, and were in intimate intercourse with the most active
naturalists, especially with Sir Joseph Banks, of whom the former was
librarian, and the latter a fellow-traveller in Cook's celebrated
voyage. James Edward Smith was also one of the most zealous disciples
of the Linnæan school; and, after the death of Linnæus, purchased his
Herbariums and Collections. It is related,[108\16] as a curious proof
of the high estimation in which Linnæus was held, that when the
Swedish government heard of this bargain, they tried, though too late,
to prevent these monuments of their countryman's labor and glory being
carried from his native land, and even went so far as to send a
frigate in pursuit of the ship which conveyed them to England. Smith
had, however, the triumph of bringing them home in safety. On his
death they were purchased by the Linnæan Society. Such relics serve,
as will easily be imagined, not only to warm the reverence of his
admirers, but to illustrate his writings: and since they have been in
this country, they have been the object of the pilgrimage of many a
botanist, from every part of Europe.
[Note 108\16: Trapp's _Transl. of Stower's Life of Linnæus_, p. 314.]
I have purposely confined myself to the history of the Linnæan system
in the cases in which it is most easily applicable, omitting all
consideration of more obscure and disputed kinds of vegetables, as
ferns, mosses, fungi, lichens, sea-weeds, and the like. The nature and
progress of a classificatory science, which it is our main purpose to
bring into view, will best be understood by attending, in the first
place, to the cases in which such a science has been pursued with the
most decided success; and the advances which have been made in the
knowledge of the more obscure vegetables, are, in fact, advances in
artificial classification, only in as far as they are advances in
natural classification, and in physiology.
To these subjects we now proceed. {404}
CHAPTER V.
PROGRESS TOWARDS A NATURAL SYSTEM OF BOTANY.
WE have already said, that the formation of a Natural System of
classification must result from a comparison of _all_ the
resemblances and differences of the things classed; but that, in
acting upon this maxim, the naturalist is necessarily either guided
by an obscure and instinctive feeling, which is, in fact, an
undeveloped recognition of physiological relations, or else
acknowledges physiology for his guide, though he is obliged to
assume arbitrary rules in order to interpret its indications. Thus
all Natural Classification of organized beings, either begins or
soon ends in Physiology; and can never advance far without the aid
of that science. Still, the progress of the Natural Method in botany
went to such a length before it was grounded entirely on the anatomy
of plants, that it will be proper, and I hope instructive, to
attempt a sketch of it here.
As I have already had occasion to remark, the earlier systems of
plants were natural; and they only ceased to be so, when it appeared
that the problem of constructing a _system_ admitted of a very
useful solution, while the problem of devising a _natural system_
remained insoluble. But many botanists did not so easily renounce
the highest object of their science. In France, especially, a
succession of extraordinary men labored at it with no inconsiderable
success: and they were seconded by worthy fellow-laborers in Germany
and elsewhere.
The precept of taking into account all the parts of plants according
to their importance, may be applied according to arbitrary rules. We
may, for instance, assume that the fruit is the most important part;
or we may make a long list of parts, and look for agreement in the
greatest possible number of these, in order to construct our natural
orders. The former course was followed by Gærtner;[109\16] the
latter by Adanson. Gærtner's principles, deduced from the dissection
of more than a thousand kinds of fruits,[110\16] exercised, in the
sequel, a great and {405} permanent influence on the formation of
natural classes. Adanson's attempt, bold and ingenious, belonged,
both in time and character, to a somewhat earlier stage of the
subject.[111\16] Enthusiastic and laborious beyond belief but
self-confident, and contemptuous of the labors of others, Michael
Adanson had collected, during five years spent in Senegal, an
enormous mass of knowledge and materials; and had formed plans for
the systems which he conceived himself thus empowered to reach, far
beyond the strength and the lot of man.[112\16] In his _Families of
Plants_, however, all agree that his labors were of real value to
the science. The method which he followed is thus described by his
eloquent and philosophical eulogist.[113\16]
[Note 109\16: _De Fructibus et Seminibus Plantarum_. Stuttg.
1788-1791.]
[Note 110\16: Sprengel, ii. 290.]
[Note 111\16: _Familles des Plantes_, 1763.]
[Note 112\16: Cuvier's _Eloge_.]
[Note 113\16: Cuv. _Eloges_, tom. i. p. 282.]
Considering each organ by itself, he formed, by pursuing its various
modifications, a system of division, in which he arranged all known
species according to that organ alone. Doing the same for another
organ, and another, and so for many, he constructed a collection of
systems of arrangement, each artificial,--each founded upon one
assumed organ. The species which come together in all these systems
are, of all, naturally the nearest to each other; those which are
separated in a few of the systems, but contiguous in the greatest
number, are naturally near to each other, though less near than the
former; those which are separated in a greater number, are further
removed from each other in nature; and they are the more removed,
the fewer are the systems in which they are associated.
Thus, by this method, we obtain the means of estimating precisely
the degree of natural affinity of all the species which our systems
include, independent of a physiological knowledge of the influence
of the organs. But the method has, Cuvier adds, the inconvenience of
presupposing another kind of knowledge, which, though it belongs
only to descriptive natural history, is no less difficult to
obtain;--the knowledge, namely, of all species, and of all the
organs of each. A single one neglected, may lead to relations the
most false; and Adanson himself, in spite of the immense number of
his observations, exemplifies this in some instances.
We may add, that in the division of the structure into organs, and
in the estimation of the gradations of these in each artificial
system, there is still room for arbitrary assumption.
In the mean time, the two Jussieus had presented to the world a
"Natural Method," which produced a stronger impression than the
{406} "Universal Method" of Adanson. The first author of the system
was Bernard de Jussieu, who applied it in the arrangement of the
garden of the Trianon, in 1759, though he never published upon it.
His nephew, Antoine Laurent de Jussieu, in his _Treatise of the
Arrangement of the Trianon_,[114\16] gave an account of the
principles and orders of his uncle, which he adopted when he
succeeded him; and, at a later period, published his _Genera
Plantarum secundum Ordines Naturales disposita_; a work, says
Cuvier, which perhaps forms as important an epoch in the sciences of
observation, as the _Chimie_ of Lavoisier does in the sciences of
experiment. The object of the Jussieus was to obtain a system which
should be governed by the natural affinities of the plants, while,
at the same time, the characters by which the orders were ostensibly
determined, should be as clear, simple, and precise, as those of the
best artificial system. The main points in these characters were the
number of the cotyledons, and the structure of the seed: and
subordinate to this, the insertion of the stamina, which they
distinguished as _epigynous_, _perigynous_, and _hypogynous_,
according as they were inserted over, about, or under, the germen.
And the classes which were formed by the Jussieus, though they have
since been modified by succeeding writers, have been so far retained
by the most profound botanists, notwithstanding all the new care and
new light which have been bestowed upon the subject, as to show that
what was done at first, was a real and important step in the
solution of the problem.
[Note 114\16: _Mém. Ac. P._ 1774.]
The merit of the formation of this natural method of plants must be
divided between the two Jussieus. It has been common to speak of the
nephew, Antoine Laurent, as only the publisher of his uncle's
work.[115\16] But this appears, from a recent statement,[116\16] to
be highly unjust. Bernard left nothing in writing but the catalogues
of the garden of the Trianon, which he had arranged according to his
own views; but these catalogues consist merely of a series of names
without explanation or reason added. The nephew, in 1773, undertook
and executed for himself the examination of a natural family, the
_Ranunculaceæ_; and he was wont to relate (as his son informs us)
that it {407} was this employment which first opened his eyes and
rendered him a botanist. In the memoir which he wrote, he explained
fully the relative importance of the characters of plants, and the
subordination of some to others;--an essential consideration, which
Adanson's scheme had failed to take account of. The uncle died in
1777; and his nephew, in speaking of him, compares his arrangement
to the _Ordines Naturales_ of Linnæus: "Both these authors," he
says, "have satisfied themselves with giving a catalogue of genera
which approach each other in different points, without explaining
the motives which induced them to place one order before another, or
to arrange a genus under a certain order. These two arrangements may
be conceived as problems which their authors have left for botanists
to solve. Linnæus published his; that of M. de Jussieu is only known
by the manuscript catalogues of the garden of the Trianon."
[Note 115\16: _Prodromus Floræ Penins. Ind. Orient._ Wight and
Walker-Arnott, Introd. p. xxxv.]
[Note 116\16: By Adrien de Jussieu, son of Antoine Laurent, in the
_Annales des Sc. Nat._, Nov. 1834.]
It was not till the younger Jussieu had employed himself for
nineteen years upon botany, that he published, in 1789, his _Genera
Plantarum_; and by this time he had so entirely formed his scheme in
his head, that he began the impression without having written the
book, and the manuscript was never more than two pages in advance of
the printer's type.
When this work appeared, it was not received with any enthusiasm;
indeed, at that time, the revolution of states absorbed the thoughts
of all Europe, and left men little leisure to attend to the
revolutions of science. The author himself was drawn into the vortex
of public affairs, and for some years forgot his book. The method
made its way slowly and with difficulty: it was a long time before
it was comprehended and adopted in France, although the botanists of
that country had, a little while before, been so eager in pursuit of
a natural system. In England and Germany, which had readily received
the Linnæan method, its progress was still more tardy.
There is only one point, on which it appears necessary further to
dwell. A main and fundamental distinction in all natural systems, is
that of the Monocotyledonous and Dicotyledonous plants; that is,
plants which unfold themselves from an embryo with two little
leaves, or with one leaf only. This distinction produces its effects
in the systems which are regulated by numbers; for the flowers and
fruit of the monocotyledons are generally referrible to some law in
which the number _three_ prevails; a type which rarely occurs in
dicotyledons, these affecting most commonly an arrangement founded
on the number _five_. But it appears, when we attempt to rise
towards a natural {408} method, that this division according to the
cotyledons is of a higher order than the other divisions according
to number; and corresponds to a distinction in the general structure
and organization of the plant. The apprehension of the due rank of
this distinction has gradually grown clearer. Cuvier[117\16]
conceives that he finds such a division clearly marked in Lobel, in
1581, and employed by Ray as the basis of his classification a
century later. This difference has had its due place assigned it in
more recent systems of arrangement; but it is only later still that
its full import has been distinctly brought into view. Desfontaines
discovered[118\16] that the ligneous fibre is developed in an
opposite manner in vegetables with one and with two
cotyledons;--towards the inside in the former case, and towards the
outside in the latter; and hence these two great classes have been
since termed _endogenous_ and _exogenous_.
[Note 117\16: _Hist. Sc. Nat._ ii. 197.]
[Note 118\16: _Hist. Sc. Nat._ i. pp. 196, 290.]
Thus this division, according to the cotyledons, appears to have the
stamp of reality put upon it, by acquiring a physiological meaning.
Yet we are not allowed to forget, even at this elevated point of
generalization, that _no one_ character can be imperative in a natural
method. Lamarck, who employed his great talents on botany, before he
devoted himself exclusively to other branches of natural history,
published his views concerning methods, systems,[119\16] and
characters. His main principle is, that no single part of a plant,
however essential, can be an absolute rule for classification; and
hence he blames the Jussieuian method, as giving this inadmissible
authority to the cotyledons. Roscoe[120\16] further urges that some
plants, as _Orchis morio_, and _Limodorum verecundum_, have no visible
cotyledons. Yet De Candolle, who labored along with Lamarck, in the
new edition of the _Flore Française_, has, as we have already
intimated, been led, by the most careful application of the wisest
principles, to a system of Natural Orders, of which Jussieu's may be
looked upon as the basis; and we shall find the greatest botanists, up
to the most recent period, recognizing, and employing themselves in
improving, Jussieu's Natural Families; so that in the progress of this
part of our knowledge, vague and perplexing as it is, we have no
exception to our general aphorism, that no real acquisition in science
is ever discarded. {409}
[Note 119\16: Sprengel, ii. 296; and, there quoted, _Flore
Française_, t. i. 3, 1778. _Mém. Ac. P._ 1785. _Journ. Hist. Nat._
t. i. For Lamarck's _Méthode Analytique_, see Dumeril, _Sc. Nat._ i.
Art. 390.]
[Note 120\16: Roscoe, _Linn. Tr._ vol. xi. _Cuscuta_ also has no
cotyledons.]
The reception of the system of Jussieu in this country was not so
ready and cordial as that of Linnæus. As we have already noticed,
the two systems were looked upon as rivals. Thus Roscoe, in
1810,[121\16] endeavored to show that Jussieu's system was not more
natural than the Linnæan, and was inferior as an artificial system:
but he argues his points as if Jussieu's characters were the grounds
of his distribution; which, as we have said, is to mistake the
construction of a natural system. In 1803, Salisbury[122\16] had
already assailed the machinery of the system, maintaining that there
are no cases of perigynous stamens, as Jussieu assumes; but this he
urges with great expressions of respect for the author of the
method. And the more profound botanists of England soon showed that
they could appreciate and extend the natural method. Robert Brown,
who had accompanied Captain Flinders to New Holland in 1801, and
who, after examining that country, brought home, in 1805, nearly
four thousand species of plants, was the most distinguished example
of this. In his preface to the _Prodromus Floræ Novæ Hollandiæ_, he
says, that he found himself under the necessity of employing the
natural method, as the only way of avoiding serious error, when he
had to deal with so many new genera as occur in New Holland; and
that he has, therefore, followed the method of Jussieu; the greater
part of whose orders are truly natural, "although their arrangement
in classes, as is," he says, "conceded by their author, no less
candid than learned, is often artificial, and, as appears to me,
rests on doubtful grounds."
[Note 121\16: _Linn. Tr._ vol. xi. p. 50.]
[Note 122\16: Ibid. vol. viii.]