266 GREENE 



as crude and imperfect as can well be imagined, that of Lin- 

 naeus is almost perfect. In the view of the former the one im- 

 portant organ is the corolla, the stamens and stigmas nothing, 

 or next to nothing ; according to Linnaius, the stamens and 

 stigmas, with the ovary, are the only essential organs of the 

 flower, the corolla relatively unimportant. All the world botan- 

 ical now understands that the philosophy of floral structure 

 upheld and most effectively promulgated by Linnaeus was the 

 right one. The actual discovery and demonstration of this new 

 and revolutionary anthology are not attributable to Linnaeus. 

 In the 3'ear that the small boy Linnasus left home for the Latin 

 school at Wexio, a new incumbent was installed into that pro- 

 fessorial chair at Paris which Tournefort had occupied. The 

 new professor had been one of the pupils of that celebrity. His 

 name was Sebastian Vaillant. The subject of his inaugural 

 address was The Structure of Flowers. In this address, soon 

 afterwards printed, Tournefort's anthology was completely 

 undermined, and what was offered in the place of it became 

 the accepted antholog}' of the remaining 80 years of the eight- 

 eenth century, of the whole of the nineteenth, and is thus far 

 that of the twentieth. In other phrase, that doctrine of the 

 organization and the functions of the flower which Vaillant 

 set forth as new in the year 17 17, has held undisputed sway, 

 without significant augmentation or amendment, for now 190 

 years. Every botanist will readily perceive that this is a very 

 rare encomium. Every one will realize that to very few can it 

 have been given to lay down the fundamentals of plant tax- 

 onomy. Those fundamentals, as we have all been taught, and 

 as our forefathers were taught, are really only two, namely 

 carpology and antholog}'. Ca^salpino in the year 1583 estab- 

 lished the true carpology. Vaillant in 17 17, the true anthology. 

 These were the two great things to be done before there could 

 be a true and philosophic system of botanical classification. 

 Now which of these two names is greatest in scientific botany 

 may be open to learned dispute ; but so long as the accepted 

 foundations of botany remain in place, successful competitors 

 for their exalted rank there can be none. 



Five years after having published this masterpiece of plant 



