252 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 54 



family. He did not, indeed, name the family. He was not, like 

 the philosophic Theophrastus of old, given to using significant 

 names for such groups of genera. But let us not here perpetrate 

 a fallacy too common with historians, of attributing the discovery 

 of a thing to the man who did but name it, after it had been dis- 

 covered by another. 



There are to be noted in Tragus not a few other instances of 

 decided movement in the direction of a better grouping of genera; 

 but only two or three more may here be allowed even a passing 

 mention. 



In our study of Fuchsius we had observed that, despite the alpha- 

 betic artificiality of his arrangement, by dint of stretching to 

 the uttermost the application of the Greek generic name Strychnos 

 ( = Solanum) , he had brought almost all solanaceous plants into one 

 line^ ; but that while a thing as anomalous as Datura had thus 

 gained admission to the company of its cognates. Capsicum had not 

 been at all apprehended by him as a member of that group. He does 

 not appear to have seen in it any likeness thereto. Tragus, while 

 also doubtless like Fuchsius finding the peppery properties of all 

 parts of the plant too foreign to those of other solanaceous genera, 

 nevertheless observes that as to the form of its leaves, and especially 

 of its flowers, it recalls So/awwm.^ This was giving that serviceable 

 hint by which later taxonomists were to be led to place Capsicum 

 within the lines of the SolanacecB. 



The borrages are a group all the then known members of 

 which are first brought together in unbroken line by Tragus^ ; and 

 he has seven genera of them, embracing something like twice that 

 number of species. All much alike in habit and inflorescence, but 

 differing one genus from another very notably as to nature of the 

 pubescence, and still more so as to form of the "flower," they 

 again come to almost one and the same thing as to the calyx and its 

 . . . three or four naked seed-like nutlets ; and all these peculiarities 

 of the flowers, together with the aspect and character of the fructifi- 

 cation. Tragus is the first botanist to describe ; and he describes them 

 for each genus. In all except the naming of it he is the founder of 

 the family of the Borraginacece. 



While there is evidence enough that this man's perceptions of 

 plant affinity were keener than those with which any earlier author 

 had been endowed, yet there was never with him any such thought 



» Page 209 preceding. 

 » Stirp. Contm., p. 928. 

 ' Ibid., pp. 339—341. 



