After Aristotle 57 



detail with the subject, the Hippocratic work On genera- 

 tion. ' The manner of generation of trees and plants are these : 

 spontaneous, from a seed, from a root, from a piece torn off, 

 from a branch or twig, from the trunk itself, or from pieces 

 of the wood cut up small.' * The marvel of generation must 

 have awakened admiration from a very early date. We have 

 already seen it occupying a more ancient author, and it 

 had also been one of the chief preoccupations of Aristotle. 

 It is thus not remarkable that the process should impress 

 Theophrastus, who has left on record his views on the forma- 

 tion of the plant from the seed. 



4 Some germinate, root and leaves, from the same point, 

 some separately from either end of the seed. Thus wheat, 

 barley, spelt, and all such cereals [germinate] from either end, 

 corresponding to the position [of the seed] in the ear, the root 

 from the stout lower part, the shoot from the upper ; but the 

 two, root and stem, form a single continuous whole. The 

 bean and other leguminous plants are not so, but in them 

 root and stem are from the same point, namely, their place 

 of attachment to the pod, where, it is plain, they have 

 their origin. In some cases there is a process, as in beans, 

 chick peas, and especially lupines, from which the root grows 

 downward, the leaf and stem upward. ... In certain trees 

 the bud first germinates within the seed, and, as it increases 

 in size, the seeds split all such seeds are, as it were, in t\vo 

 halves ; again, all those of leguminous plants have plainly two 

 lobes and are double and then the root is immediately thrust 

 out. But in cereals, the seeds being in one piece, this does 

 not happen, but the root grows a little before [the shoot]. 



' Barley and wheat come up monophyllous, but peas, beans, 

 and chick peas polyphyllous. All leguminous plants have a 

 single w T oody root, from which grow slender side roots . . . 

 but wheat, barley, and the other cereals have numerous slender 

 roots by which they are matted together. . . . There is a con- 

 trast between these two kinds ; the leguminous plants have 



1 Historia plantarum, ii. i, i. 



