3 72 HISTORY OF BOTANY. 



finished was remarkable. It fell into the hands of his pupil, Gaspard 

 Wolf, who was to have published it, but wanting leisure for the office, 

 sold it to Joachim Camerarius, a physician and botanist of Nuremberg, 

 who made use of the engravings prepared by Gessner, in an Epitome 

 which he published in 1586. The text of Gessner's work, after pass- 

 ing through various hands, was . published in 1754 under the title of 

 Gessneri Opera Botanica per duo Scecula desiderata, &c., but is very 

 incomplete. 



The imperfect state in which Gessner left his botanical labors, 

 makes it necessary to seek the evidence of his peculiar views in scat- 

 tered passages of his correspondence and other works. One of his 

 great merits was, that he saw the peculiar importance of the flower 

 and fruit as affording the characters by which the affinities of plants 

 were to be detected; and that he urged this view upon his contempo- 

 raries. His plates present to us, by the side of each plant, its flower 

 and its fruit, carefully engraved. And in his communications with his 

 botanical correspondents, he repeatedly insists on these parts. Thus 4 

 in 1565 he writes to Zuinger concerning some foreign plants which 

 the latter possessed : " Tell me if your plants have fruit and flower, as 

 well as stalk and leaves, for those are of much the greater conse- 

 quence. By these three marks, flower, fruit, and seed, I find that 

 Saxifraga and Consolida Eegalis are related to Aconite." These cha- 

 racters, derived from the fructification (as the assemblage of flower 

 and fruit is called), are the means by which genera are established, and 

 hence, by the best botanists, Gessner is declared to be the inventor of 

 genera. 6 



4 Epistolce, fol. 113 a; see also fol. 65 b. 



6 Haller, Biblio Botanica, i. 284. Method! Botanica rationem primus pervi 

 dit ; dari nempe et genera qute plures species comprehenderent et classes qua? 

 multa genera. Varias etiam classes naturales expressit. Characterem in flore 

 ioqiie semine posuit, &c. Rauwolfio Socio Epist. "Wolf, p. 39. 



Linnaeus, Genera Plantarum, Pref. xiii. " A fructification e plantas distinguere 

 in genera, infinite sapientite placuisse, detesit posterior setas, et quidem primus, 

 sraculi sui ornamentum, Conradus Gessnerus, uti patet ex Epistolis ejus postre- 

 mis, et Tabulis per Carmerariurn editis." 



Cuvier says {Hist, des Sc. Nat. 2 e p e , p. 193), after speaking to the same effect, 

 " II fit voir encore que toutes les plantes qui ont des fleurs et des fruits sembla- 

 bles se ressemblent par leurs proprietes, et que quand on rapproche ces plantes 

 on obtient ainsi une classification naturelle." I do not know if he here refers 

 to any particular passages of Gessner's work 



