ANNOTATIONS AND ADDITIONS. 369 



of Aristotle (Probl. 20, 7) that the production of seed is the ulti- 

 mate object of the existence and life of the plant. Since Caspar 

 Fried. Wolf (Theoria Generations, 5-9 ), and since our great 

 (German) Poet, the process, of development in the organs of fructi- 

 fication has become the morphological foundation of all systematic 

 botany. 



That study, and the study of the physiognomy of plants, I here 

 repeat, proceed from two different points of view : the first from 

 agreement in the inflorescence or in the delicate organs of repro- 

 duction ; the second from the form of the parts which constitute 

 the axes (/. e. the stems and branches), and the shape of the leaves, 

 dependent principally on the distribution of the vascular fascicles. 

 As, then, TiEeTaxes and appendicular organs predominate by their 

 volume and mass, they determine and strengthen the impression 

 which we receive; they individualize the physiognomic character of 

 the vegetable form and that of the landscape, or of the region in 

 which any of the more strongly-marked and distinguished types 

 severally occur. The law is here given by agreement and aflinity 

 in the marks taken from the vegetative, i. e. the nutritive organs. 

 In all European colonies, the inhabitants have taken occasion, from 

 resemblances of physiognomy (of "habitus," "facies"), to bestow 

 the names of European forms upon tropical plants or trees bearing 

 very different flowers and fruits from .those from which the names 

 were originally taken. Everywhere, in both hemispheres, northern 

 settlers have thought they found Alders, Poplars, Apple and Olive- 

 trees. They have been misled, in most cases, by the form of the 

 leaves and the direction of the branches. The illusion has been 

 favored by the cherished remembrance of the trees and plants of 

 home, and thus European names have been handed down from gene- 

 ration to generation ; and in the slave colonies there have been added 

 to them denominations derived from Negro languages. 



The contrast so often presented between a striking agreement of 

 physiognomy and the greatest diversity in the inflorescence and 

 fructification between the external aspect as determined by the 

 appendicular or leaf-system, and the reproductive organs on which 

 the groups of the natural systems of botany are founded is a 

 remarkable and surprising phenomenon. We should have been in- 



