Current Literatttre. 261 



Morison and notably Ray were among the first to successfully 

 attempt a rational classification of plants. Grew shares with 

 the Italian botanist Malpighi the distinction of laying the founda- 

 tions of plant anatomy. It is noteworthy that Grew's Anatomy 

 of Plants (1672) appeared the very day on which Malpighi's 

 manuscript was submitted for publication. Hales was probably 

 the first plant physiologist (1727), standing "in the solitude of 

 all great original inquirers." Brown was foremost among modern 

 morphologists, worthy of Von Humboldt's estimate of him — 

 "facile botanicorum princeps." The elder Hooker occupies a 

 place with the elder De Candolle of Geneva, as a great descrip- 

 tive botanist, the last of the pre-Darwinians, and as an organizer 

 of botanical gardens — his name is indissolubly associated with 

 the making of Kew. Henslow was a pioneer ecologist and 

 botanical educationist. Lindley (1799-1865) linked botany with 

 horticulture. Gilbert (1817-1901) has done the same with agri- 

 culture, making the Rothamstead experiment station perhaps the 

 best known of all its kind. Harvey was a pioneer algologist, and 

 was the first to give an account of the seaweeds of our continent 

 in a magnificent work published by the Smithsonian Institution 

 (1858). Berkeley ranks as a foremost mycologist, and "it is not 

 too much to pronounce Berkeley as the originator and founder of 

 Plant Pathology." Some measure of the extent of his labors is 

 possible when it is remembered that in his herbarium of fungi 

 presented to Kew in 1879 — 10,000 species in all — 5,000 were types 

 of his own description and naming. Williamson leads in the van 

 of British palaeobotanists. Joseph Hooker fills a large place as 

 a systematist of the post-Darwinian era. His natural system of 

 classification (Bentham and Hooker's) held the field for a gen- 

 eration. It was the immediate predecessor of the Engler system 

 now in vogue. Ward was among the first to apply strict bacterio- 

 logical methods to the study of fungus diseases of plants. He 

 was associated for a time with a forest school, and published the 

 well-known Manuals on Trees. His leading studies were in the 

 field of parasitism and one of his books, worthy of perusal by 

 every forester is "Disease in Plants." J. H. F. 



