SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES 195 

 wrote remained unprinted and was partially dispersed after his death (in 

 1657). Some few treatises were published by his pupils, among them one 

 entitled Isagoge pbytoscopica (^Handbook of Botanical Study). This work, com- 

 prising a volume of forty-six quarto pages, must be regarded as one of the 

 pioneer works in botany. It gives a concentrated account of the theory of 

 botany, under the obvious influence of Cesalpino's, but without the latter's 

 profitless Aristotelean speculations; to begin with, the plant is characterized 

 as such, after which an account is given of the various organs, each of which 

 is briefly diagnosed in a manner that is striking, though abstract. "A leaf 

 is that which stretches out from its place of attachment in height and length 

 so that the surfaces of the third dimension are dissimilar to one another; it 

 is the leaf's inner surface that is differentiated from the outside." — The 

 whole exposition, with its concise, vigorous sentences and its analyses of 

 different parts of the plant drawn up in tabular form, is more reminiscent 

 of Linn^eus's work than that of any other of the early botanists. Linnsus, 

 in fact, mentions Jung as his precursor as far as the drawing up of rules for 

 the description of flowers is concerned and actually took up the characteristic 

 description of plant-organs at the point where Jung had finished and certainly 

 brought it up to a far higher standard. 



One who in his time was of considerable importance as a classifier of 

 plants was Augustus Quirinus Rivinus (i65Z-i7i3). Born in Leipzig of a 

 family of scholars, which really bore the name of Bachmann, he studied 

 medicine in his native town, ultimately becoming a professor there. He was 

 a many-sided scholar, working in widely differing spheres; his chief fame, 

 however, rests on his great botanical work Ordo flantarujn, which he pub- 

 lished in two large folio volumes, illustrated with fine copper engravings, 

 entirely at his own expense. He was the first to insist that the old division 

 into trees, bushes, and herbs should be done away with; in its place he would 

 classify plants exclusively according to their corolla, and he thus created an 

 artificial system, which, however, was not very practical. He likewise urged 

 the adoption of a simplified nomenclature for the plants themselves, but 

 in this, too, his criticism of the old system was more successful than his 

 attempts at reform. 



A far greater service to classification was rendered by Joseph Pitton de 

 TouRNEFORT, at just about the same time. He was born at Aix in the south 

 of France in 1656 and was destined by his father for the priesthood — much 

 against his will. When his father died, therefore, he gave up theology and 



the latter wrote purer Greek than that of the New Testament, whereupon the priests in Hamburg 

 and theologians at Wittenberg accused him of blasphemy, because he had reproached the Holy 

 Spirit, which had inspired the words of the Bible, with a deficient knowledge of languages. 

 Jung had to abridge his school education, but, thanks probably to his high reputation, escaped 

 the sentence of excommunication with which he was threatened. 



