He would ope his leathern scrip, And show me simples of a thousand names, 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,20 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.21 Monks, merchants, and adventurers travelled far, but knowledge was little increased. Simon of Genoa," 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,2 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. 23 66 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 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 24 20 Sprengel, i. 230. 24 Augsburg, 1488. 21 Ib. i. 239. 23 Ib. ib. 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. 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,25 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. 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 1524,28 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, though he studied plants in nature, his book (written in the 27 25 De Natura Stirpium, 1536. 27 Hist. des Sc. Nat. partie ii. 169. 26 Sprengel, i. 252. Platonic form of dialogue), has still the character of a commentary on the ancients. 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 Viva 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 Casalpinus. THE arrangement of plants in the earliest works was either arbi trary, 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.1 1 His Historia Stirpium was published at Basil in 1542. VOL. II.-24. 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 Labiata. Again, the Stock, the Wall-flower, the Mustard, the Cress, the Lady-smock, the Shepherd'spurse, have, among other similarities, their blossoms with four petals arranged crosswise; these are all of the order Crucifera. 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 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, 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. 2 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 Casalpinus, 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 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 un 3 3 Cuvier, Leçons sur l'Hist. des Sciences Naturelles, partie ii. p. 193. |