FOEMATIOX OF SYSTEMS. 381 



commanded the attention of the botanical world, the feeling of the im- 

 portance of the affinities of plants became continually more strong and 

 distinct. 



Lobel, who was botanist to James the First, and who published his 

 Stirpium Adversaria Nova in 1571, brings together the natural fami- 

 lies of plants more distinctly than his predecessors, and even distinguishes 

 (as Cuvier states, 33 ) rnonocotyledonous from dicotyledonous plants ; one 

 of the most comprehensive division-lines of botany, of which succeeding 

 times discovered the value more completely. Fabius Columna, 33 in 

 1616, gave figures of the fructification of plants on copper, as Gessner 

 had before done on wood. But the elder Bauhin (John), notwith- 

 standing all that Cassalpinus had done, retrograded, in a work published 

 in 1619, into the less precise and scientific distinctions of trees with 

 nuts ; with berries ; with acorns ; with pods ; creeping plants, gourds, 

 &c.: and no clear progress towards a system was anywhere visible 

 among the authors of this period. 



While this continued to be the case, and while the materials, thus 

 destitute of order, went on accumulating, it was inevitable that the 

 evils which Csesalpinus had endeavored to remedy, should become 

 more and more grievous. " The nomenclature of the subject 3 * was in 

 such disorder, it was so impossible to determine with certainty the plants 

 spoken of by preceding writers, that thirty or forty different botanists 

 had given to the same plant almost as many different names. Bauhin 

 called by one appellation, a species which Lobel or Matheoli designated 

 by another. There was an actual chaos, a universal confusion, in 

 which it was impossible for men to find their way." We can the bet- 

 ter understand such a state of things, from having, in our own time, 

 seen another classificatory science, Mineralogy, in the very condition thus 

 described. For such a state of confusion there is no remedy but the 

 establishment of a true system of classification ; which by its real 

 foundation renders a reason for the place of each species ; and which, 

 by the fixity of its classes, affords a basis for a standard nomenclature, 

 as finally took place in Botany. But before such a remedy is obtained, 

 men naturally try to alleviate the evil by tabulating the synonyms of 

 different writers, as far as they are able to do so. The task of con- 

 structing such a Synonymy of botany at the period of which we speak, 

 was undertaken by Gaspard Bauhin, the brother of John, but nineteen 

 years younger. This work, the Pinax Theatri Botanici, was printed 



34 CUT. Lecons, &c. 198. 83 Ib. 206. M Ib. 212. 



