en. IX. THE FIRST CLASSIFICATION OF PLANTS. 71 



readiness with which he would lay aside his own work to 

 help others. Yet, though he had to earn his own living and 

 died before he was forty-nine, he became the first botanist 

 and zoologist of his time, and left remarkably large and 

 valuable works behind him. He was one of the bright 

 examples of what may be done by a true desire for know- 

 ledge, and a humble, honest, loving nature ; for while he 

 helped others, he could never have done what he did in 

 zoology and botany if he had not made friends all over the 

 world, who were ready to send him information whenever 

 and wherever they were able. 



First Classification of Plants by Caesalpinus, 1583. 

 Nearly thirty years after Gesner's death, Dr. Andrew Caesal- 

 pinus, a physician and Professor of Botany at Padua, first 

 tried to carry out his system of grouping plants according to 

 their seeds. He began by dividing plants into trees and 

 herbs, as Theophrastus had done (see p. 17). Then he di- 

 vided the trees into two classes ist, those which have the 

 germ at the end of the seed farthest from the stalk, as in the 

 walnut, where you will find a little thing shaped like a tiny 

 heart lying just at the pointed end ; 2nd, those which have 

 the germ at the end of the seed which is nearest the stalk, as 

 in the apple. The herbs he divided into thirteen classes, ac- 

 cording to the number of their seeds and the way in which 

 they are arranged in the seed-vessels. Some plants, for 

 example, have a single pod or seed-vessel, with a number of 

 seeds inside it, as our common pea ; others, like the poppy, 

 have a seed-vessel divided into a number of little cells, each 

 filled with seeds. 



By grouping together all the plants which had the same 

 kind of seed-vessel, Caesalpinus made thirteen classes, and 

 formed a system of plants which would have been a great 



