LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY GREENE iq 



authors at even approximate agreement. Often that of an indi- 

 vidual author was a compound of inconsistencies, utterly inhar- 

 monious within itself. As to that very first necessity of botany, 

 rational system, confusion seemed to reign. The flower was an 

 organ hitherto little studied, and scarcely yet appealed to in the 

 art or science of plant grouping. Two or three botanists of a 

 century earlier than Tournefort had suggested that, after all, not 

 in roots or stems or leaves, but in the flower there might per- 

 chance be found the key to a more satisfactory method of plant 

 classifying. He undertook now a new systematization of the world 

 of plants, everywhere appealing to anthology in so far as by the 

 presence of flowers and fruits the appeal was possible. Ceasing 

 to take as criteria the qualities of plants, or even the characters 

 of their vegetative organs, and by giving special and close study to 

 both flowers and fruits instead, with judicious co-ordination and 

 use of the characters of both, will botanical system henceforward 

 obtain best furtherance. 



With neither the strong points nor the weak ones in Tournefort's 

 system, nor with its success or failure, are we here concerned. All 

 that will engage us now is his conception of botany as a science in 

 process of further development and improvement; in other words, 

 what he would have taken to be the leading philosophic threads of 

 botanical history. They would probably be two, at least as chiefly 

 conspicuous ; for during his career his mind had been much occupied 

 with (i) the thought that better and more firmly established generic 

 groups had been the most crying need of botany from the earliest 

 times, and (2) that such more acceptable and more securely estab- 

 lished genera would result from the defining of them according to 

 morphology of flower and fruit, the consideration of vegetative 

 organs being omitted as far as possible. So then, from his own 

 outlook over the past of botany and from his best forecasting of its 

 future, they have helped it forward most who have most contri- 

 buted to a better anthology and carpology, and such obtain with 

 him foremost places in his epitome of botanical history. The 

 fullest credit is given to all botanical travellers to distant shores 

 who have contributed to the enrichment of botanical gardens, 

 and to the making of illustrated folios representing flowers and 

 fruits of plants alien and rare. Meanwhile how small consideration 

 Tournefort accorded to plant anatomy and physiology is evinced 

 by this, that in his history he has not a line to spare for the names 

 of Grew and Malpighi, great promoters though they were of the 

 cause of plant organography in general, and well entitled to rank 



