Classification of Plants. 21 



regard to the botanical contributions which the curious 

 may unearth from the works of Aristotle, Theophrastus, 

 Dioscorides, Pliny, and Galen. 



The textual obscurities of the works inherited from 

 the ancients involved a loss of time and energy quite 

 out of proportion to the whole value of the Mediaeval 

 legacy. Instead of observing or experiment- Mysticism, 

 ing, the inquirer wasted his ingenuity in trying to find 

 out what the ill-described plant could be which Diosco- 

 rides had credited with so many virtues. Moreover, 

 the minds of most inquirers were filled with that inter- 

 esting but lamentable mysticism, which saw nature as 

 magical and symbolic instead of real and rational, and 

 found expression in the long-lived doctrine of " signa- 

 tures ". According to this superstition the shape of a 

 leaf, the colour of a flower, or the like, was a sign of 

 the use for which the plant was meant. 



The scientific renascence of the sixteenth century, 

 which sent throbs of new life in so many directions, 

 touched even the systematic botanist, and The 

 we find a succession of herbalists who looked Herbalists, 

 out with fresh eyes upon nature, describing and draw- 

 ing with loving care. Even their names are now un- 

 familiar Brunfels, Fuchs, Bock, Dodoens, De TEcluse, 

 De 1'Obel, and Bauhin save perhaps when one wonders 

 for a minute over the commemorative name of some 

 plant, like Lobelia or Bauhinia. But they mark an 

 important transition from traditional to real botany, 

 and it is with their painstaking enthusiasm that we 

 associate the beginnings of precise descriptions, careful 

 drawings and engravings, herbaria, local "floras", 

 botanical excursions, and even gardens. The greatest 

 of them, after whom came a decline, was Kaspar Bauhin 

 (1550-1624). In his hands descriptions rose to the 

 dignity of terse diagnoses, and he preceded Linnaeus in 

 giving each plant at least two names. Like the other 

 herbalists he was weak in his general classification, but 

 full of insight in his minor groupings, sometimes reach- 

 ing, as if by a sort of insight (the subconscious result of 

 very thorough description), to a recognition of natural 

 affinities. 



