LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY — GREENE 43 



for the first begin to be able to understand, to appreciate, and to 

 interpret the eariiest botanical authors; not those only of ancient 

 Greece and Italy, but of the fathers of botany in England, in 

 France, in Germany, and Switzerland; a worthy company whose true 

 position seems to me never to have been half understood, and 

 whose works have therefore more or less completely baffled the 

 attempts of profound scholars and eminent botanists who in the 

 capacity of historians, have sought to elucidate the texts of these 

 forefathers and to show what they severally accomplished. Botany 

 did not begin with the first books of botany, nor with the men who 

 indited them; though every historian of the science whom I have 

 read has assumed that it did. The most remote and primitive of 

 botanical writers, of whatever country or language, found a more 

 or less extensive vocabulary of elementary botany in the colloquial 

 speech of all. The chief organs of plants — stem, trunk, branch, leaf, 

 flower, fruit, pod, seed, root, tendril, thorn, and a multitude of 

 others — had been discriminated and named ; the organs even known 

 by all who had acquaintance with plants and trees, and the names 

 were everywhere in use. Even the. functions of several of the or- 

 gans had been correctly ascertained before ever a line of botany 

 had been written; most probably even before letters had been 

 invented. The improvement of wild things by cultivation, the 

 propagating of the newly acquired sorts by cuttings, by division of 

 perennial roots, and, in the case of trees, by grafting, are likewise 

 arts that seem to antedate history; as do also the designating of 

 different varieties or species that are evidently nearly akin, by 

 twofold names, one generic, the other specific or varietal. 



All these conditions being recognized, a new and peculiar difficulty 

 will confront the critical student of a protobotanical author. It will 

 in exceptional cases seem doubtful as to whether a given fact or 

 generalization is the fruit of that author's own investigations, and 

 therefore new with him, or whether it be something already long 

 understood and accepted, w'hich he is but placing upon written 

 record. It is, however, a kind of difficulty that gives zest to the 

 study of classic texts; and many such doubts may give place to 

 certainty, or something near it, after persevering examination, and 

 comparison with other passages that are not of doubtful import. 



I am unwilling to conclude this introduction without repeating 

 it, that the essence and substance of botany proper are organ- 

 ography and the logical deductions thatw^e draw from organography. 

 They may not be said to be the whole of the science ; yet duly and 

 comprehensively considered they will be found to come near it. 



