THE STUDY OF PLANTS IN ANCIENT AND MODERN TIMES. 5 
herbal of Hieronymus Bock, which appeared in 1546, and in which “the herbs 
growing in German countries are described from long and sure experience,” contains 
a passage treating of the controversy of the day as to whether the Latin name 
Erica was applicable to the German Heath or not; and in the midst of the discus- 
sion the author expresses the opinion that “the plants we know best were the least 
known to the Latins;” and at last he exclaims: “Be our heath the same as Erica 
or not, it is in any case’a pretty and sturdy little shrub, beset with numerous brown 
rounded branches, which are clothed all over with small green leaves; and its 
appearance is like that of the sweet-smelling Lavender Cotton.” And again in a 
number of other places, after making lengthy philological statements relating to the 
old names, he ends by losing patience and declaring that the proper thing would be 
to lay aside all disputes concerning this nomenclature. 
At length a Belgian, Charles de l’Eeluse (1526-1609), whose name was latinized 
into Clusius, emancipated himself entirely from the hair-splitting verbal contro- 
versies of the day. He was also the first to abandon the utilitarian standpoint; 
and in his extensive work, which appeared at the end of the sixteenth century, 
he was guided solely by the desire to become acquainted with every flowering thing. 
He therefore endeavoured to distinguish, describe, and where possible to draw the 
various forms of plants, to cultivate them, and to preserve them in a dried condition. 
It was just at that time that collections of dried plants began to be made. Such a 
collection was at first called a “hortus siceus,’ and later on a “herbarium.” All 
museums of natural history were forthwith furnished with them. Moreover, 
Clusius, actuated by the wish to see with his own eyes what the vegetation on the 
other side of the mountains looked like, was the first man to travel for the purpose 
of botanizing. In order to extend his knowledge of plants he roamed over Europe 
from the sierras of Spain to the borders of Hungary, and from the sea-coast to 
the highlands of the Tyrol. Journeys of this kind in pursuit of botanical know- 
ledge were by degrees extended to wider and wider limits, and thus an abundance of 
material was brought together from all latitudes and from every quarter of the globe. 
An immense number of isolated observations were accumulated in this way, till, 
at length, in the first decades of the eighteenth century, the desirability of sifting 
and arranging this chaotic mass became urgent. When, therefore, the Swedish 
naturalist Linnzeus (1707-1778), by the exercise of unparalleled industry, mastered 
in a fabulously short space of time the detailed results of centuries of labour, and 
afforded a general survey of all this scattered material, he obtained universal 
recognition. Linnzus introduced short names for the various species in place of 
the cumbrous older designations, and showed how to distinguish the species by 
means of concise descriptions. For this purpose he marked out the different parts 
of a plant as root, stem, leaf, bract, calyx, corolla, stamens, pistil, fruit, and seeds. 
Again, he distinguished particular forms of those organs, as, for instance, scapes, 
haulms, and peduncles as forms of stems, and in addition also the parts of each 
organ, such as filaments, anthers, and pollen in the stamens, and ovary, style, and 
stigma in the pistil; and to each one of these objects he assigned a technical name 
