212 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 54 



from an old herbal in manuscript — illustrated by drawings, no 

 doubt — which had been available to him. Even the specific names 

 P. major and P. minor were from said manuscript. Contemplating 

 these two plates, whether the proposed genus consisting of a 

 hieraciuin and an antennaria seem rational or absurd will depend 

 entirely upon whether one view the types with the eye of the 

 modem botanist, or with that of him of Fuchsius' time. The 

 modem, taught by the traditions of not more than five or six 

 generations of his more recent botanical ancestry, looks at the 

 flowers only, and in consequence realizes only that the two must 

 be regarded as of widely separate genera; for one has the flower 

 head of a hawkweed, the other a congested bunch of cudweed heads ; 

 and as to the structure of their individual flowers they represent 

 something like two extremes. But it will be both illogical and 

 unfair to test the consistency of the earlier classification by pre- 

 suming to hold it amenable to modern taxonomic principles; though 

 this seems to be about what the readers of old botany, and even 

 the historians, have always hitherto been doing. The consistency 

 of the Fuchsian PiloseJla is readily seen if, blinding ourselves as he 

 and his forbears were blind to small floral structures, we look at 

 and compare those parts of the two plants which they looked upon 

 as bearing marks of consanguinity. Both the antennaria and 

 hieracium are small perennial herbs of one and the same mode of 

 growth, and that mode rather exceptional. Each has its leaves most- 

 ly in a basal tuft, and bears its flowers at the summit of scapiform 

 stems. A number of depressed stolons leafy with a smaller foliage 

 radiate from the base of the stem of each, so that both in the same 

 fashion propagate vegetatively and form colonies. Add to these 

 and other points of morphologic agreement the consideration that 

 both were received as possessing the same remedial virtues, and 

 we have a rational genus according to all the leading principles of 

 sixteenth-century taxonomy. 



Thus comprehending the situation — realizing that these groups 

 that look so strange and motley have not been formed at random, 

 but rather under guidance of definite principles — every such group 

 acquires a new and even a lively interest. Let us open the book at 

 its initial chapter. The name of the first genus is Absinthium. 

 Three species are described, two of them figured well. They are: 



Fuchsian Recent 



Absinthium vulgare Artemisia Absinthium. 



Absinthium Seriphium Sisymbrium Loeselii. 



