ARRANGEMENT OF PLANTS. 371 



occupying a far more important place than their differences. It is the 

 general establishment of this conviction and its consequences which 

 we have now to follow. 



The first writer in whom we find the traces of an arrangement 

 depending upon these natural resemblances, is Hieronyrnus Tragus, 

 (Jerorn Bock,) a laborious German botanist, who, in 1551, published 

 a herbal. In this work, several of the species included in those natu- 

 ral families to which we have alluded,* as for instance the Labiate, 

 the Cruciferse, the Composite, are for the most part brought together; 

 and thus, although with many mistakes as to such connexions, a new 

 principle of order is introduced into the subject. 



In pursuing the development of such principles of natural order, it 

 is necessary to recollect that the principles lead to an assemblage of 

 divisions and groups, successively subordinate, the lower to the higher, 

 like the brigades, regiments, and companies of an army, or the pro- 

 vinces, towns, and parishes of a kingdom. Species are included in 

 Genera, Genera in Families or Orders, and orders in Classes. The 

 perception that there is some connexion among the species of plants, 

 was the first essential step ; the detection of different marks and cha- 

 racters which should give, on the one hand, limited groups, on the 

 other, comprehensive divisions, were other highly important parts of 

 this advance. To point out every successive movement in this pro- 

 gress would be a task of extreme difficulty, but we may note, as the 

 most prominent portions of it, the establishment of the groups which 

 immediately include Species, that is, the formation of Genera; and 

 the invention of a method which should distribute into consistent and 

 distinct divisions the whole vegetable kingdom, that is, the construc- 

 tion of a System. 



To the second of these two steps we have no difficulty in assigning 

 its proper author. It belongs to Csesalpinus, and marks the first great 

 epoch of this science. It is less easy to state to what botanist is clue 

 the establishment of Genera; yet we may justly assign the greater 

 part of the merit of this invention, as is usually done, to Conrad 

 Gessner of Zurich. This eminent naturalist, after publishing his 

 great work on animals, died* of the plague in 1565, at the age of 

 forty-nine, while .he was preparing to publish a History of Plants, a 

 sequel to his History of Animals. The fate of the work thus left un- 



* Sprengel, i. 270. 



' Cuvier, Lerons sur I' Hist, des Sciences Naturelles, partie ii p. 198. 



