

Classification of Plants. 25 



astound the modern specialist. We hear of him as a 

 student of zoology and of physics, as a professor of 

 anatomy in Tubingen, and of botany in St. Petersburg; 

 yet, Sachs says, "he gives us the impression of a 

 modern man of science more than any other botanist 

 of the eighteenth century, with the exception of Koel- 

 reuter ". 



To Auguste Pyrame de Candolle (1778-1841) may 

 perhaps be given the palm of maximum productivity 

 among botanists, and that is saying much. He ex- 

 perimented, herborized, travelled, monographed, and 

 pondered, producing an amount of botanical work 

 which has been referred to by many as "incredible", 

 and filled up his spare time with political and civic 

 activities. His name is particularly associated with the 

 famous Prodromus Systematis Naturalis, "the grandest 

 work of descriptive botany that is as yet in existence ". 

 He had in a high degree what may be called " morpho- 

 logical insight ", and moved through the mazes of 

 classification with a much firmer step than any of his 

 predecessors. In the emphasis with which he indicated 

 the distinction between morphological and physiological 

 characters, we may compare him, among zoologists, to 

 Owen. 



De Candolle's most illustrious botanical contempo- 

 rary was Robert Brown (1773-1858), whom Humboldt 

 called " botanicorum facile princeps". His first great 

 achievement was bringing back from Australia a collec- 

 tion of about 4000 plants, in great part new species. 

 His life-work was a series of monographs, which he 

 leavened with the ideas of morphology. " The peculiar 

 character of the natural system as compared with every 

 artificial arrangement is brought out into higher relief 

 by Robert Brown than by Jussieu and De Candolle, and 

 he succeeded better than any of his predecessors in 

 separating purely morphological and systematically 

 valuable relations of organization from the physiological 

 adaptations of organs." To Robert Brown also be- 

 longs the credit of emphasizing and utilizing the em- 

 bryological basis of classification. In this he may be 

 compared with Von Baer. 



