plants was largely from their use as drugs, and they were 

 described simply to facilitate their recognition. Any real 

 knowledge of them was naturally meager, and false ideas 

 that clung for a long time, some until comparatively re- 

 cently, prevented any proper conception of form and 

 function. 



As would be expected the contributions become of less 

 and less value as we approach the middle ages, the botani- 

 cal writings of which time were full of the wildest fantasy 

 and superstition. The efforts of this period need not ar- 

 rest our attention. 



In the sixteenth century in northern Europe, particularly 

 Germany, there was a movement towards the real study 

 of plants from the plants themselves as evidenced by the 

 works of the herbalists, but no attempt at classification 

 was made. Here there was an attempt at the enumera- 

 tion and illustration of plants from living specimens, and 

 confused and empirical as this work was, it was actuated 

 by an honest endeavor to record, as accurately as possible, 

 actual forms, and not fanciful abstractions which never 

 did and never could have existed. All the descriptions 

 were detached from one another and little or no attempt 

 was made at classification, though by the repeated study 

 of many similar forms the idea of natural relationship be- 

 gan to dawn in a vague way. The actual purpose of all 

 this plant study was the recording of the officinal plants, 

 for special knowledge of plants was still confined to their 

 uses in medicine. 



While this movement was advancing in northern Eu- 

 rope, a mainly artificial system of classification was devel- 

 oping in Italy and found its culmination in the work of 

 Caesalpino, who strongly influenced the progress of bot- 

 any, even after his own time and into the middle of the 

 eighteenth century. Great as was the advance he made, 

 it would have been far greater had it been given him to 



7 



