XXXU INTRODUCTION. 



■while the Chapters contain Genera and 

 Species : so that the whole book looks 

 wonderfully like the modern arrangement, 

 and it requires some attention to discover 

 that the difference is great. Gaspar Bauhin 

 had indeed the genius of a natural classi- 

 fier ; but he could not shake himself al- 

 together free from literary traditions, and 

 it happens occasionally that his grouping 

 is guided by the conventional area of a 

 name and not by a common nature. Still, 

 there are Avhole tracts of natural verity 

 in this marvellous work, some families 

 almost entire ; and if we find Ray by and 

 bye treating of Monocotyledons and Dico- 

 tyledons, we must allow that the hint was 

 already latent in Gaspar Bauhin's dis- 

 tribution; for his first two books contain 

 the Monocotyledons as at present under- 

 stood, with hardly any admixture. He 

 had sifted and verified and taken the best 

 from the fathers of modern Botany^ such 

 as Fuchs and Lobel, though he had missed 

 the more penetrating thoughts of Coesal- 

 pinus. This Pinax Theatri Botanici 

 was only the outline of a system, which he 



