HISTORY OF BOTANY. 225 



exotics. He had the direction of the imperial garden at Yienna, 

 and afterward was public professor of Botany at Leyden. His 

 enthusiasm for tliis science terminated only with his life. Be- 

 fore his time the art of describing plants loith precision and ac- 

 curacy was unknown'^ hut^ unlike the descriptions of his 2yreder 

 cessors^ his were neither faidty from superfluous terms^ nor from 

 the omission of important circumstances. 



3tl:6. Coisaljyinus^ a native of Florence, who was contempo- 

 rary with Clusius, proposed to form species into classes. The 

 characters which he employed for this purpose were, the dura- 

 tion^ and size of plants / presence.^ or absence of flowers j the num- 

 ber of cotyledons ; the situation of the seed, as erect or pendent; 

 the adherence of the pericarp to the seeds / the number of cells 

 in the pericarp)^ and the number of seeds which they contained ; 

 the adherence of the calyx to the ovary j and the nature of the 

 root.f whether bulbous oy fibrous. This method was too imper- 

 fect to be followed, having neither the simplicity nor the unity 

 to render its application useful. 



347. John Bauhin was the friend and pupil of Gesner ; li^ 

 composed a general history of plants. Gaspard Bauhin, a 

 younger brother, no less active and learned, conceived the de- 

 sign of a work which should contain a history of all known 

 plants^ together with the different names which other writers had 

 applied to the same plant. Clusius and the elder Bauhin had 

 imagined something like a genus of plants, formed by the 

 grouping of similar species, but Gaspard Bauhin expressed this 

 more decidedly in remarks upon generic distinctions. His 

 work, the result of forty years' labor, was of great assistance to 

 Linnaeus in perfecting our present system of Botany. "We find, 

 in looking back upon the labors of botanists during the 16th 

 century, that more had been accomplished than during any 

 former period ; the character of novelty and originality exhib- 

 ited in these researches is highly creditable to those wdio thus 

 led the way in the march of improvenient. 



348. The 17th century, in its commencement, was not favor- 

 able to the sciences. Europe was agitated by continual wars, 

 and the arts of peace were neglected ; but in the last part of 

 that age a taste for natural history revived ; 'men of highly 

 gifted minds applied themselves to the study of Botany ., and 

 many^ undertook long voyages., with the sole design of examining 

 foreign plants. Botanists were astonished at the great number 

 of interesting plants discovered l)y travelers in the region of 

 South Africa, around the Cape of Good Hope, and in the East 

 India islands. Two Dutch botanists of the name of Commelin., 



346. Caesalpinns — Characters employed by him in the formation of classes.— 347. The B:iuhiii»— 

 Retrospect of the 16th centurv.— 348. Botany in the 17th century. 



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