68 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 54 



kinds as of this category. 1 He denominates them Sf 

 which his Latin translators have rendered olerarbores, and would 

 appear in English as tree-potherbs. All herbaceous plants he 

 classifies as perennial, biennial, and annual; also carefully stating 

 that the annual and biennial are hardly distinguishable, inasmuch 

 as both die, root and branch, within the space of a year, and as 

 soon as they have once perfected seeds. 



While this important example of botanical method is in hand, 

 it will be pertinent to take note of those two mental processes, 

 analysis and synthesis, of which every piece of method is the 

 outcome; this for the purpose of clearing our own mental vision 

 for an inquiry into the question of how much of this classifying 

 according to texture and duration was found by Theophrastus 

 ready-made and in common use, and to what extent, if at all, he 

 revised, augmented, and improved it. Problems of this kind are 

 most difficult; even impossible of exact solution by the mere 

 botanist. The erudition of the specialist in philology and the 

 history of language is here called for, without the aid of which the 

 early history of botany never can be written. Happily, however, 

 great linguistic learning is not requisite to a few reasonable infer- 

 ences respecting Theophrastus' part in this classic piece of method. 

 The distinguishing between woody growths and herbaceous is 

 doubtless older than history. It is also evident that with remote 

 enlightened antiquity tree and shrub were distinguished. The 

 words representing these ideas are very ancient; but the half- 

 shrub, or suffrutescent growth as we of to-day speak of it, appears 

 to have been set apart as a group, and assigned a distinctive name 

 by Theophrastus himself. There are many old and classic names 

 for plants distinctively herbaceous. There is weed, grass, herb, 

 vegetable, even the word "plant " itself as originally used, every one 

 implying the herbaceous as to texture and short-life period; and 

 so much for very primitive analysis and synthesis ; but the putting 

 of all these things together, the synthesis of them under one com- 

 prehensive term, was, if I mistake not, a Theophrastan contribution 

 to botanical method. Moreover, and what is of even more profound 

 interest, it appears as if the synthesis of everything that vegetates 

 tree, shrub, half-shrub, and herbaceous plants, including even 

 sea-weeds and fungi into one vast comprehensive assemblage of 

 living entities called plants, is also to be attributed, if I mistake 

 not, to Theophrastus. Primeval and prehistoric observations 



1 Hist., Book i, ch. 5. 



