CHAPTER I. 



OUTLINES OF THE GENERAL MORPHOLOGY OF 

 PH^ENOGAMOUS PLANTS. 



10. MORPHOLOGY, the doctrine of forms, as the name denotes, 

 is used in natural history in nearly the same sense as the older 

 term Comparative Anatomy. If it were concerned merely with 

 the description and classification of shapes and modifications, 

 it would amount to little more than glossology and organography. 

 But it deals with these from a peculiar point of view, and under 

 the idea of unity of plan or type. 1 



11. As all vertebrate animals are constructed upon one type 

 (or ground plan), which culminates or has its archetype in man, 

 so all plants of the higher grade (8) are strictly of one type ; 

 the different kinds being patterns or repetitions of it, with varia- 

 tions. The vegetable kingdom, however, does not culminate in 

 an archetype or highest representative. As respects the organs 

 of vegetation, the higher classes of cryptogamous plants exhibit 

 this same type ; but it is only in the most general or in a 

 recondite sense that this can be said of their organs of repro- 

 duction, and of the less differentiated structure of the lowest 

 classes. Wherefore cryptogamous plants are left out of the 

 present view, to be treated apart. 



12. Viewed morphologically and as to its component organs, 

 a plant is seen to consist of an axis or stem, which sends off 

 roots into the soil, and bears lateral appendages, commonly as 

 leaves, but which may be very unlike leaves in whole appearance 



1 The term Morphology was introduced into science by Goethe, at least as 

 early as the year 1817 (Zur Naturwissenschaft iiberhaupt, besonders zur 

 Morphologie, Stuttgart und Tubingen, 1817-24). On page 9 of the first 

 volume, he is understood to have suggested this word for the purpose and in 

 the sense now adopted in botany and zoology. It essentially replaces an 

 earlier and somewhat misleading word, Metamorphosis. (304.) 



Apparently the first botanist to adopt the term was Auguste de St. 

 Hilaire, in his " Le9ons de Botanique, comprenant principalement la Mor- 

 phologie Ve'ge'tale, etc., Paris, 1841. The term seems not to have been taken 

 rup, in zoology, by Etienne Geoffrey Saint-Hilaire, the antagonist of Cuvier 

 (who was of a wholly different family from that of the botanist), although 

 the same idea was denoted by his phrase " unity of organic composition " 



