LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY GREENE 3 7 



mark of its having been originally the woodmen's vernacular name 

 for it. 



Hitherto this fact of the universal existence of a crude primitive 

 system of plant classification — one that antedates all botanical 

 writing, a system that is in vogue to-day all over the world in out- 

 of-the-way places, in complete isolation from the influence of 

 colleges and universities — appears to have remained unnoticed by 

 botanical writers. At least, I have met with no allusion to the 

 fact. I therefore doubt that it has entered into the minds of 

 botanical thinkers in recent times that such untutored yet effective 

 and useful plant taxonomy exists, and must have existed prime vally. 



There will be readers enough to whom this thought will be new and 

 somewhat startling. The fond conceit has long prevailed, that there 

 was never anything in the world that could be called science until 

 some three centuries ago, or four, at the farthest. Among several 

 ideas about the botany of the past — ideas very widely, almost uni- 

 versally, entertained, though without the least warrant from history 

 — I shall here mention but the following : that plant genera did not 

 obtain fair recognition until Tournefort, nor species as distinguished 

 from varieties until Linnaeus, nor families before Adanson. Now 

 if, according to the present thesis, the beginning of the receiving 

 and naming of common plants in groups is ancient beyond all 

 possibility of discovery, then no author can be credited with, or 

 any date be assigned for, the beginning of the recognition and 

 naming of either genera or species. What great men like those just 

 named accomplished for the improvement of system in botany 

 was, the better delimitation of several anciently accepted genera, 

 and the laying down of certain rules and principles by which 

 they thought all plants, known and unknown, might be arranged in 

 groups more nearly according to their affinities. Assuming that 

 the rules and principles were philosophic, all this was immensely 

 to the advantage of classification ; but when for the twofold purpose 

 of emphasizing the principles and making the new system easy to 

 learn, they caused each genus name to be printed in large type, 

 in the middle of the page, occupying a line by itself, then close 

 under that the formal statement of its characters as a genus, and 

 after that and only less conspicuously the species names, each 

 occupying a separate paragraph, they were by this rigid formalism 

 inaugurating, though they knew it not, an era of didacticism 

 which now after two centuries has degenerated into an almost 

 gross pedantry which rules systematic botany at present well-nigh 

 universally. To illustrate the supremacy of this pedantry let me 



