LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY GREENE gj 



as yet showing but a solitary primal leaf, exhibit quite a tuft of 

 roots, these all simple and equal, whereas the two-parted seeds in 

 their germinating exhibit several leaves and but a solitary "root." 

 Furthermore he notes that the grains with their multiple roots send 

 up culms that never branch, while the merely tap-rooted legumi- 

 nous herbs exhibit stems that branch freely and widely. 



To the beautiful work of a Malpighi one gives somewhat more 

 credit than is fairly due it, until one has read these chapters of the 

 ancient Athenian master. Then it is clearly apprehended that 

 the man of the seventeenth century may have received the sug- 

 gestions of his own work directly from the Greek philosopher; and 

 is almost ready to add that the beautiful drawings of sprouting 

 grain adorning Malpighi's folio might almost have been done from 

 the Theophrastan descriptions of the same. It must needs be 

 conceded that the botanic garden at Athens, founded by Aristotle, 

 and the earliest of which there is any record, was wonderfully 

 prolific of new botanical facts of profoundest import. What later 

 one has equalled it in supplying first principles to botany as a 

 science? Or who since Theophrastus has used an opportunity of 

 that kind so immensely to the advantage of succeeding generations? 



Anatomy. Immediately after having enumerated the principal 

 external organs of plants, and given the first outline of a system 

 based on these, Theophrastus takes up the subject of internal 

 structure. Two short chapters contain the simplest elements 

 of plant anatomy, as he is able to make them out. If these chap- 

 ters commend themselves to our most careful reading, it is partly 

 because they are the earliest in which such matter was discussed, 

 and partly for the reason that after the writing of them some 

 eighteen centuries elapsed before another botanist resumed the 

 topic. 



Apparently having in mind all forms of plant life except the 

 lowest and simplest, he opens the subject with the statement 

 that "plants are made up of bark, wood, and pith when pith is 

 present. "1 We of the present are accustomed to this as being 

 the structure of stems. Let none be disquieted by the fact that 

 Theophrastfis does not limit bark, wood, and pith to stems; for we 

 are learning that he never writes a line carelessly; never indites 

 the simplest and most fundamental proposition without rigid 

 investigation and profound forethought. Possibly we shall find 

 that he thinks the substances of bark, of wood, and of pith all 



' Hist., Book i, ch. 3. 



