LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY — GREENE 229 



■obscure fertile flowers. "The leaves of all kinds of oaks when 

 young are very small and delicate, and there app ar with them 

 at this stage long yellow aments. . . . After the aments there 

 come forth very small red flowers which subsequently transform 

 themselves into acorns."^ 



Sexuality in plants never yet having been apprehended, Tragus 

 had no conception of the fact of dioecism. He studied the catkins 

 of willows, but without discovering that those of some individuals 

 are promptly deciduous, and that only those of certain other 

 individuals remain longer. He therefore wrongly attributes to 

 willow catkins indiscriminately the quality of remaining on the 

 tree until they have developed a kind of wool which sails away on 

 the passing breeze. In just this connection, however, he makes a 

 remark which reveals him for once in the character of a truly 

 inductive philosopher, unwilling to venture a broad general con- 

 clusion from an isolated fact. "Whether this wool of wdllows be 

 their seed or not I do not know, except as regards the fourth species, 

 in the case of which it at least takes the place of seed; for in this 

 I have caught the floating wool, have sown it, and have seen wil- 

 lows of this same species spring up from the sowing. " 2 



As to certain particulars in the structure of petaliferous flowers 

 the chapters of Tragus seem still more clearly to herald the coming 

 of a new era in anthology. Not that he has any new doctrine of the 

 flower. So far from it, he follows the universal and time-honored 

 practice of calling, in the case of petaliferous flowers, that and 

 that alone the flower, which only long after his day came to be 

 known as the corolla. But he observes and takes note of things 

 outside of this " flower, " and of other things inside it, the tendency 

 of which notes and observations is to raise a question as to whether 

 there are not other things which, taken together with the circle of 

 colored leaves, should all collectively be thought to constitute the 

 flower. He does not formally propound any such question. Even 

 that suggestion of it which his language carries, it is more than 

 likely he himself did not perceive. Let us attend to a few instances 

 of anthological comment that seem to be new and original with 

 Tragus. 



As subjects of brief description and of various comment the 

 poppies are very ancient, and were so in Tragus' time; and he is the 

 first man in all history to describe the plants as with the pen of a 

 botanist ; the pen of a man who had looked at them with his own 



' Stirp. Comnt., p. iioi. 

 * Ibid., p. 1073. 



