CHAP, i.] from Brunfels to Kaspar Bauhtn. 25 



decisive manner the incorrectness of the assertion, that the 

 study of organisms sprang from the recognition of individual 

 species ; that it is this which is directly given, and that without 

 it no advance in the science is possible. The historical fact 

 rather is, that descriptive botany began often, perhaps most 

 often, not with species but with genera and families, that very 

 often at first whole groups of forms were conceived of as unities, 

 which had to be divided later and of set purpose into separate 

 forms ; and up to the present day one part of the task of the 

 systematist is to undertake the splitting up of forms previously 

 regarded as identical. The notion that the species is the 

 object originally presented to the observer, and that certain 

 species were afterwards united into genera, is one that was 

 invented in post-Linnaean times under the dominion of the 

 dogma of the constancy of species ; it happened so sometimes, 

 but just as often the genus was the object first presented, and the 

 task of the describer was to resolve it into a number of species. 

 In the 1 6th century the conception neither of genus or species 

 had yet been defined ; for the botanists of that period genera 

 and species had the same objective reality. But, in the process 

 of continually making the descriptions of individual plants 

 more exact, forms once separated were united, and those before 

 assumed to be identical were separated, till it gradually became 

 apparent that both operations must be pursued with system and 

 method. It cannot therefore be exactly said that somebody 

 first established the species, another the genus, and a third 

 person again the larger groups. It is more correct to say that 

 the botanists of the i6th century carried out this process of 

 separation up to a certain point without intending it, and in 

 the effort to give the greatest possible preciseness to their 

 descriptions of individual forms. It lay therefore in the nature 

 of the case, that those groups which we call genera and species 

 should first be cleared up, and we find in fact at the end 

 of this period in Kaspar Bauhin the genera already distin- 

 guished by names, if not by characters ; the species by names 



