2o8 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 54 



genera majora of the botanists of a somewhat later period, the orders 

 or families of to-day, there is little to be read in Fuchsius; for his 

 sequence of genera is alphabetic, a kind of arrangement which pre- 

 cludes the grouping of genera into families. It does not, however, 

 in any way influence the definiteness of the genera themselves, or 

 of the species composing them. The work is divided into 343 

 chapters, and each chapter is devoted to one genus and no more; 

 so that the number of genera treated of is the same as the number 

 of the chapters. Many of the genera are represented by only a 

 single species, many by two or three, several by four or five, and 

 one has seven species, all described and figured. But one must 

 not pass to the study of his genera without noting certain lapses 

 from the alphabetic arrangement which are made in deference to 

 what are held to be the affinities of a genus. These are not numer- 

 ous, but they are enough to show Fuchsius as susceptible of being 

 influenced by the idea, even in his time an old one, that some genera 

 are interrelated. Here it must also be observed that the alphabetic 

 order he follows is that of the Greek rather than Latin names of 

 genera. For medical botany, all through the ages and down to 

 Fuchsius' time, Greek rather than Latin was the preferred language 

 of nomenclature, at least with those best educated; because all 

 three of the most venerated authorities upon that part of botany, 

 Hippocrates, Dioscorides, and Galenos had been Greeks and had 

 written their treatises in Greek. Now while in his Latin text 

 Fuchsius uses the Latin names of things, quite as he ought, the 

 generic names heading the chapters are the Greek generic names; 

 and the sequence is that of Greek letters of Greek names; so that 

 the chapter on the genus of the elder trees or bushes is headed 

 not Samhucus but Acte, and that of the plantains not Plantago but 

 Arnoglosson. 



Now for a sequence of genera in a book of sixteenth-century 

 botany, the choice of the Greek alphabetic order left its author 

 certain liberties. All Latin names are naturally exempt from such 

 a rule ; and there were now in Fuchsius' time not a few plants holding 

 places in the pharmacopeia which had not been known to the 

 Greeks of old, and which therefore had only their Latin and their 

 vernacular appellations. Since the Latin names of these may not 

 consistently head chapters where the headings are professedly 

 Greek, Fuchsius is apt to use these as occasions for giving ex- 

 pressions of opinion about natural affinity by placing them in the 

 line of what he conceives to be their real kindred. For one 

 instance, take his placing of Datura Metel, a plant then newly 



