5o Artificial Systems and Terminology of Organs 



as the opinion of Cesalpino also, is shown in his ' Classes Plati- 

 tarum,' where in describing Cesalpino's system he says : ' He 

 regarded the flower as the interior portions of the plant, 

 which emerge from the bursting rind; the calyx as a 

 thicker portion of the rind of the shoot ; the corolla as an 

 inner and thinner rind ; the stamens as the interior fibres of 

 the wood, and the pistil as the pith of the plant.' It may be 

 observed however that this was not exactly what Cesalpino 

 says ; but it is nevertheless certain that Linnaeus' own view as 

 given in these words was intended to reproduce that of Cesal- 

 pino ; and if it does not do this exactly, there is no essential 

 difference in principle between the two, Linnaeus' conception 

 being perhaps a more logical statement of Cesalpino's meaning. 

 Cesalpino's doctrine of metamorphosis appears plainly on 

 another occasion also ; he says, that we do not find envelopes, 

 stamens, and styles in all flowers ; the flowers change in some 

 cases into another substance, as in the hazel, the edible chest- 

 nut, and all plants that bear catkins ; the catkin is in place of 

 a flower, and is a longish body arising from the seat of the 

 fruit, and in this way fruits appear without flowers, for the styles 

 (' stamina ') form the longer axis of the catkin (' in amenti longi- 

 tudinem transeunt '), while the leafy parts and the stamens are 

 changed into its scales. All this shows that the notion of a 

 metamorphosis, of which we find intimations as early as 

 Theophrastus, was a familiar one to Cesalpino, and it fitted in 

 perfectly with his Aristotelian philosophy, while Goethe's 

 doctrine on the same subject is equally scholastic in its charac- 

 ter, and therefore looks strange and foreign in modern science. 

 It has already been observed that Cesalpino includes only the 

 envelopes and stamens under the word flower, and distinguishes 

 the rudiments of the fruit from them ; therefore he says that 

 there are plants which produce something in the shape of a 

 catkin, without any hope of fruit, for they are entirely unfruit- 

 ful ; but those which bear fruit have no flowers, as Oxycedrus, 

 Taxus, and among herbs Mercurialis, Urtica, Cannabis, in which 



