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, died38 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.

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. Thus39 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

373 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 Yet he treats the Master with deference, and, as has been observed,42 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 “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.

After certain preparatory speculations, he says,44 “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.”

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 (cor45), 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 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 Legumina46 correspond to the natural order Leguminosæ; his genus Ferulaceum47 to the Umbellatæ; his Bulbaceæ48 to Liliaceæ; his Anthemides49 to the Compositæ; in like manner, the Boragineæ are brought together,50 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 “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.

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 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.

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 shows53 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.

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 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:

and similar language of praise has been applied to him by the best botanists up to Cuvier,55 who justly terms his book “a work of genius.”

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 “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 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

379 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 Barnabas Cobo, who went as a missionary to America in 1596, also described plants.60 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 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 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 Rumphe, another Dutch consul at Amboyna,64 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 Shortly afterwards, Engelbert Kæmpfer,66 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 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) 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 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.

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 subject69 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.

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 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 he must have made considerable use of his work. For he has introduced into his own preface a passage copied literally72 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.

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 states73 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 Concerning the principles of this botanist, little was known during his life. But a manuscript of his book was communicated75 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.