LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY — -GREENE 293 



sixteenth, makes note of the fact that these same seeds are attached 

 to the central part of their pericarp ^ ; thus suggesting long before 

 the botanical world had apprehended its taxonomic usefulness, the 

 several modes of placentation. 



He is accustomed to peer into and take note of every aspect of 

 the various dry dehiscent fruits that he meets with in the gardens 

 or in the wilds. In describing species with capsular fruits he tells 

 whether its capsule is one-celled or several-celled, naming the lines 

 of dehiscence, the commissures, the partitions, if there be any, the 

 septa, and the compartments themselves the loculamenta. Then 

 the seeds are reported on, not only as to the method of arrangement 

 but as to every item of their form, the color and texture of their 

 testa, and the color and flavor of the nucleus — so he names it — 

 when they are large enough to be tested by the sense of taste. 



Cordus has not, like Tragus, followed up the suggestions of Theo- 

 phrastus about the cotyledons ; for that belongs to the garden 

 student, who plants seeds and watches their germination and first 

 appearing above ground; and Cordus is more zealously devoted 

 to wild botany. To him, however, must be conceded priority in the 

 matter of distinguishing between spores and seeds on the one hand, 

 and between spores and pollen on the other; this also without his 

 ever having seen either an individual spore or an individual pollen 

 grain. For the clearer understanding of Cordus in this particular 

 field of enquiry we must recall Tragus' having so studiously and so 

 laboriously gathered what he and others believed to be the seeds of 

 the fern osmunda.^ That he called them seeds implies the belief 

 on his part that young ferns could be produced from them. But 

 then, the superstitious Tragus seems also to have believed that 

 trees could be reproduced both by their proper seeds, and also by 

 that flower-dust which Cordus afterwards named pollen.^ Among 



> Hist. PL, p. 89. 



2 See page 238 preceding. 



' Tragus at page 1073 has the following as to the reproduction of junipers: 

 "Maio mense tenuissimus ac luteus pulvis e juniperis in auras avolare 

 conspicitur, quod semen iUius esse animadverti. Post hunc quern diximus 

 pulverem baccae prorumpunt exiguse, virides, quae altero demum anno an- 

 tumno appetente, quod illi tempor maturitatis est, coeruleo tinguntur colore, 

 etc., etc. E nucleis lapidosis, qui in hisce baccis continentur, novas Juniperi 

 plantulae fruticomt. " If in this passage semen is used botanically the mean- 

 ing can be no other than that junipers may grow from pollen. If, what is 

 improbable, he employs it in a zoological sense, as meaning that the dust 

 which he says sails away upon the air is needful to the fertilization of the 

 seed within the juniper berry, then he is the first to proclaim the modern doc- 



