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 Matthioli 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 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. 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 Casalpinus. 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 Eugland. 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 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,35 which approaches rather to a natural method than to a rigorous distribution, like that of his predecessor Casalpinus, or that of his successor Ray. Thus the herbaceous plants are divided into climbers, leguminous, siliquose, unicapsular, 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 Casalpinus. 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,36 he must have made considerable use of his work. For he has introduced into his own preface a passage copied literally 37 from the dedication of Casalpinus; which passage we have already quoted (p. 238,) 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 Casalpinus, borrowed from him without acknowledginent, 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. Among those whose efforts in this way had the greatest and earliest 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 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. 39 Concerning the principles of this botanist, little was known during his life. But a manuscript of his book was communicated 40 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 Doroscopia 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. 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, the value of characters of species, which, he holds, must not be taken from the thorns, nor from colour, 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 must be united, though their names are several. I do not see in this much that interferes with the originality of Ray's method,42 of which, in consequence of the importance ascribed to it by Cuvier, as we have 38 Leçons Hist. Sc. p. 487. 39 Sprengel, ii. 27. 40 Ray acknowledges this in his Index Plant. Agri Cantab. p. 87, and quotes from it the definition of caulis. 41 Sprengel, ii. 29. 42 Methodus Plantarum Nova, Historia Plantarum, 1686. 1682. already seen, I shall give an account, following that great naturalist. I confine myself to the ordinary plants, and omit the more obscure vegetables, as mushrooms, mosses, ferns, and the like. Such plants are composite or simple. The composite flowers are those which contain many florets in the same calyx.44 These are subdivided according as they are composed altogether of complete florets, or of half florets, or of a center of complete florets, surrounded by a circumference or ray of demi-florets. Such are the divisions of the corymbiferæ, or composite. 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 Stellata. 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. 43 Cuv. Leçons Hist. Sc. Nat. 488. |