20 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 54 



some salient points in the history of anthology. Anatomy and 

 physiology are so discussed as if not inseparably connected with 

 botany proper. Indeed in his partitioning of the science into the 

 two compartments of the Sy^stematic and Structural he expresses 

 his mind to the effect that while Botany proper is a part of Natural 

 History, the consideration of the inner structure and physiology of 

 plants belongs rather to Physiology. ^ His treatment of these, as 

 developed in the course of the seventeenth century is nevertheless 

 full and explicit. But it is progress in the discovery of new types, 

 history of botanical exploration at home and abroad, and the 

 enrichment of botanical gardens, which more particularly engage 

 Sprengel; and, as Adanson had been more interested in the de- 

 velopment of the idea of plant families, Sprengel, as a devoted 

 Linnaean, gives himself to the investigation of the history of genera 

 and species. All the long way from Theophrastus to Linnaeus 

 Sprengel lists new types generic and specific as discovered and 

 published by prominent authors; so that a fair chronological history 

 of at least the European Flora is furnished ; and these lists of each 

 man's discoveries form so large a part of the body of his work that its 

 principal index is an idex of genera and species. 



There is no need of pursuing beyond this brief initiative our 

 examination into the somewhat diverse philosophies of botanical 

 history that have hitherto found expression. Every one may be 

 permitted to have his own. In the present treatise exception will 

 be taken to one assumption made by all earlier historians, that for 

 the earliest intimations of anything looking in the direction of the 

 science of botany we must have recourse to those oldest pieces of 

 literature in which plants are more or less freely mentioned. 

 Adanson, for example, does not begin botanical history without 

 naming Orpheus, Musa, Solomon, Hesiod, Homer, Metrodorus, and 

 Hippocrates who as poets or as physicians wrote of plants. Spren- 

 gel has among his initial chapters one bearing the title "Flora 

 Bibhca" another "Flora Homerica, " another, "Flora Hippocra- 

 tica " ; and these chapters of Sprengel are botany, even very interest- 

 ing botany^ ; but this is not saying that there is botany in the Sacred 

 Scriptures, or in the poems of Homer, or in the medical writings of 

 Hippocrates. They are, however, classic texts upon which a man 

 of Sprengel's rare accomplishments may write botany. And yet 

 I seem to apprehend certain rudiments of a science of botany in 

 those ancient pieces of literature, the real substance of which those 



1 Sprengel, Hist. Ret Herb., vol. i, p. 3. 

 » Ibid., vol. i, pp. 6-49. 



