LINNyEAN MEMORIAL ADDRESS 265 



tematic ootany rests upon them. Every variation of botanical 

 system that has been builded in the last 324 years has rested on 

 the Ctesalpinian foundation, /'. c, tliat in the fruit and seed of 

 plants we have the key to their affinities. Not one of tlie great 

 geniuses botanical in later times who have most advanced the 

 science has questioned the validity of that principle. Not one 

 has yet dared to predict that the Ceesalpinian foundations are 

 likelv ever to be abandoned as insecure. 



The earlier disciples of Ca^salpino made many amendments 

 and signal improvements of his system, through further study 

 of floral structure, as furnishing yet other clews to plant affini- 

 ties. The summing up of these many improvements was made 

 by Tournefort, whose Elements of Botany, published in 1694, 

 III years after Cassalpino's great work, and 13 years before 

 the birth of Linna?us, took the whole botanical world captive, 

 and held undisputed sway, until everywhere but in France, the 

 native land of Tournefort, they were superseded by the system 

 of Linnaeus. 



To the botanists present who are unread in the history of our 

 science, nothing will be more surprising than the information 

 that, with the great Tournefort, who founded upon the flower 

 the most universally approved system of botany which, up to 

 that time had been presented, the flower was hardly anything 

 more than what we know as the corolla. Of the functions of 

 stamens, stigmas and styles he was ignorant, confessed his 

 ignorance, and regarded them as wholly insignificant things, 

 hardly to be seriously taken note of. The flower and the corolla 

 were with him almost synonymous ; and yet so uncertain was 

 he in his identification of the corolla that, where, as in all the 

 Arace^, it is absent, he took the spathe for the corolla ; while 

 in such apetalous things as the castor bean, he regarded the 

 brightly colored stigmas as the corolla. Such extremely crude 

 ideas of floral structure were those of Tournefort to the end of 

 his career; and he died when the infant Linnaeus was one and 

 one half years old. 



Now the Linntean doctrine of the flower and that of Tourne- 

 fort represent opposite extremes. To be more specific : while 

 Tournefort's conception of the flower as an organism is about 



