THE STUDY OF PLANTS IN ANCIENT AND MODERN TIMES. 6 



herbal of Hieronymus Bock, which appeared in 1546, and in which "the herbs 

 growing in German countries are described from long and sure experience," contains 

 a passage treating of the controversy of the day as to whether the Latin name 

 Erica was applicable to the German Heath or not; and in the midst of the discus- 

 sion the author expresses the opinion that "the plants we know best were the least 

 known to the Latins;" and at last he exclaims: "Be our heath the same as Erica 

 or not, it is in any case a pretty and sturdy little shrub, beset with numerous brown 

 rounded branches, which are clothed all over with small green leaves; and its 

 appearance is like that of the sweet-smelling Lavender Cotton." And again in a 

 number of other places, after making lengthy philological statements relating to the 

 old names, he ends by losing patience and declaring that the proper thing would be 

 to lay aside all disputes concerning this nomenclature. 



At length a Belgian, Charles de I'Ecluse (1526-1609), whose name was latinized 

 into Clusius, emancipated himself entirely from the hair-splitting verbal contro- 

 versies of the day. He was also the first to abandon the utilitarian standpoint; 

 and in his extensive work, which appeared at the end of the sixteenth century, 

 he was guided solely by the desire to become acquainted with every flowering thing. 

 He therefore endeavoured to distinguish, describe, and where possible to draw the 

 various forms of plants, to cultivate them, and to preserve them in a dried condition. 

 It was just at that time that collections of dried plants began to be made. Such a 

 collection was at first called a " hortus siccus," and later on a " herbarium." All 

 museums of natural history were forthwith furnished with them. Moreover, 

 Clusius, actuated by the wish to see with his own eyes what the vegetation on the 

 other side of the mountains looked like, was the first man to travel for the purpose 

 of botanizing. In order to extend his knowledge of plants he roamed over Europe 

 from the sierras of Spain to the borders of Hungary, and from the sea-coast to 

 the highlands of the Tyrol. Journeys of this kind in pursuit of botanical know- 

 ledge were by degrees extended to wider and wider limits, and thus an abundance of 

 material was brought together from all latitudes and from every quarter of the globe. 



An immense number of isolated observations were accumulated in this way, till, 

 at length, in the first decades of the eighteenth century, the desirability of sifting 

 and arranging this chaotic mass became urgent. When, therefore, the Swedish 

 naturaHst Linnaeus (1707-1778), by the exercise of unparalleled industry, mastered 

 in a fabulously short space of time the detailed results of centuries of labour, and 

 afibrded a general survey of all this scattered material, he obtained universal 

 recognition. Linnaeus introduced short names for the various species in place of 

 the cumbrous older designations, and showed how to distinguish the species by 

 means of concise descriptions. For this purpose he marked out the different parts 

 of a plant as root, stem, leaf, bract, calyx, corolla, stamens, pistil, fruit, and seeds. 

 Again, he distinguished particular forms of those organs, as, for instance, scapes, 

 haulms, and peduncles as forms of stems, and in addition also the parts of each 

 organ, such as filaments, anthers, and pollen in the stamens, and ovary, style, and 

 stigma in the pistil; and to each one of these objects he assigned a technical name 



