PLANT TAXONOMY 



a brief history of 



Major developments in the field 



The history of civihzation, or indeed all time- 

 dependent phenomena, can be divided into a num- 

 ber of major chronological periods according to the 

 intellectual imagination or disposition of the 

 recorder. Thus one might partition historic time 

 into one-hundred-year periods and graphically treat 

 each unit with equal systematic coverage as if 

 history were a straight line whose ascending time- 

 event path was devoid of significant event fluctua- 

 tions. Fortunately for students of history, most 

 historians have found it more appropriate to divide 



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