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comparing his earlier with his later system, he began by being a fructicist, and ended by being a corollist."

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" (whose real name was Bachman,) classified by the flower alone; instead of combining it with the fruit, as Ray had done." 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 plant, was employed even by Tournefort, and only finally expelled by Linnæus.

It would throw little light upon the history of botany, especially for our purpose, to dwell on the peculiarities of these transitory systems. Linnæus," 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" 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."

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 irregu larity 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 Personata, which resemble an ancient mask; the Labiata, with their two lips; the Cruciform; the Rosacea, with flowers like a rose; the Umbelliferæ; the Caryophyllea, as the

45 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.

40 Cuv. Leçons, 491.

47 Historia Generalis ad rem Herbariam, 1690.

is Philos. Bot. p. 21.

49 Enumeratio Plantarum, &c., 1687.

50 Linn.

Pink; the Liliacea, with six petals, as the Tulip, Narcissus, Hyacinth, Lily; the Papilionaceae, 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 LINNEUS.

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

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Bawe must go irvaris a iv yes in his life to come to the pemod z wich is most meant works belong. University and mo'y gumus minced him to wavel; and after various changes of scene, le va sced a Ellaod as the rarstor of the splendid botanita, gambar of becny Clifted az opchen banken. Here it was that be lion the foundation of his firare greatness. In the two years of às rescence & Harena be polished nine works. The first, the Sistema Nazca, which ortuted a comprehensive sketch of the whole domain of Natural History, excited general astonishment, by the senteness of the „bservations, the happy talent of combination, and the clearness of the systematic views. Such a work could not fail to procure consideratie respect for its author. His Hortus Cliffortiana

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Sprengel, i 232

* Ibid. 234.

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.

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.

Ir 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

conviction had never been acted upon so as to produce a distinct and adequate descriptive botanical language. Jung, indeed,' 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.

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 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.

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 lan

3

Isagoge Phytoscopica, 1679.

• Sprengel, ii. 28.

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