32 
time of Nero and of Pliny. In the revival of learning during the 
15th century, his treatise on Materia Medica was the one source of 
botanical knowledge. In the latter half of the 16th century, 
Botany began to be studied apart from Medicine, when Leonard 
Fuchs, Lonicer, Lobel, (whose names are perpetuated im the 
Fuchsia, the Lonicera and the Lobelia), Turner, Gesner and others - 
began to investigate plants for themselves. These men were the 
fathers of modern Botany. In this science two things are of 
primary moment—method and system; by the first is secured 
the identification of each particular plant, by the second the 
arrangement of the knowledge acquired. Before Linnzus 
there was method only, but Modern Botany has blended 
method and system completely. Botanical Description has a 
precise language of its own which every botanist knows, and 
which, being Latin, is available to all educated men of science. 
The importance of this is shown by the fact that no solid scientific 
knowledge can be acquired except by the use of words which are 
fixed in their meaning. Medieval description was quite a hazy 
affair. Some well known plant was taken as a kind of pattern 
and the various characteristics of the plant to be described were 
compared with the like portions of the model. This was illustrated 
by Virgil’s description of the lemon by comparing it with the 
laurel which was known to the Romans. Dioscorides was the 
author of the other instrument of method—Synonomy, as in his 
journeys with the Roman armies he gathered his plants and 
collected a host of names for one of the same plant. 
When Europe had lost the light of Greek and Roman civiliza- 
tion, the Arabs, who were great scholars, bore the torch of learning 
eastwards and westwards along the African shore, and it was in the 
Arabic translations of ancient masters that Europe recovered the 
light she had lost; but the Arabs had learned no system and 
adopted simply an alphabetical arrangement. With the separation 
of Botany from Medicine in the 16th century two distinct lines of 
research began to be followed. Starting from the same point on _ 
the great highway of knowledge the two classes constantly 
diverged, one of them, sinking lower and lower, first were 
honest herbalists and then unequivocal quacks. The other class 
slowly developed modern Systematic Botany. Caesalpin of Florence, 
in 1583, was the first to attempt a Natural classification. As years 
rolled by Morrison, John Ray and Tournefort each added to the 
little pile of knowledge; at last Linnzeus arrived on the scene, and 
every plant fell into its own place in his system. He discerned the 
real importance of the sexuality of plants and on that founded an 
organised system and nomenclature. The passage from his system 
te the Natural Orders was an easy and inevitable step. 
As illustrating the way in which certain very old generic 
names of plants had become specific terms, it may be mentioned 
