FREAKS OF PLANT LIFE. 



pounded before, and more than once its solution has 

 been attempted.^ The history of these progressive 

 estimates it rather a curious one. It commences 

 390 B.C. with Theophrastus, and he enumerated 500 

 kinds of plants. This may be presumed to represent 

 all that were then known. The botanical knowledge 

 of King Solomon had, then, comparatively narrow 

 limits, even though he discoursed on all plants from 

 the cedar of Lebanon to the hyssop on the wall. 

 Pliny (A.D. 79) increased the number of plants to 

 double that of his predecessor. In the beginning of 

 the seventeenth century the number had increased to 

 6,000. The second edition of Linnseus's great book 

 included no more than 8,800. Willdenow, up to 

 1807, had detected 17,457 species of flowering plants. 

 From this period the increase in the number of 

 known species was very rapid, as a result of the 

 stimulus given to botany by Linnaeus and his 

 successors, so that at the beginning of the present 

 century Robert Brown had calculated the flowering 

 plants at 37,000, and Humboldt all plants, flowering 

 and non-flowering, at 44,000. 



Progressing still further down the stream of time, 



' R. B. Hinds on "Geographical Botany,'' "Annals of Nat. 

 Hist.," XV. (1845), P- 15- ■^- Henfrey, "Elementary Course of 

 Botany" (1857), p. 659. Humboldt, " Views of Nature " (1850), 

 p. 276. 



