THE HERBALISTS 9 



Plantarnm. The latter is essentially physiological, touching 

 upon agriculture to a certain extent : the former is mainly 

 morphological, structural, descriptive, and it is here that the 

 first attempt at a classification of plants is to be found. In 

 writing the Historia, Theophrastus was endeavouring, as a Greek 

 philosopher rather than as a botanist, to "give account of" plants; 

 and in order to do so he found it necessary to arrange them in 

 some kind of order. Seizing upon obvious external features, he 

 distinguished {Lib. I. cap. 5) and defined Tree, Shrub, Under- 

 shrub and Herb, giving examples ; adding, however, that the 

 definitions are to be accepted and understood as typical and 

 general, " for some may seem perhaps to deviate " from them. 

 Simple as was this mode of arrangement, Theophrastus further 

 simplified it in the course of his work, by treating trees and 

 shrubs as one group, and undershrubs and herbs as the other. 



It may seem, at first sight, singular that a lecture purporting 

 to discuss the state of systematic botany in England during the 

 17th century should begin with a reference to the botany of the 

 Greeks. The explanation is that the elementary classification 

 introduced by Theophrastus persisted throughout the 17th 

 century ; the use of the groups Trees, Shrubs, and Herbs came 

 to an end only in the i8th century, with the advent of Linnaeus. 

 It seems almost incredible, but it is a fact, that the lapse of the 

 nearly 2000 years that separated Theophrastus from Morison 

 marked no material advance in the science of classification. 

 Botanical works, when they were something more than com- 

 mentaries on Theophrastus or Dioscorides, took cognizance of 

 little else than the properties, medicinal or otherwise, of plants, 

 and their economic uses. 



A growing perception of the essential resemblances observable 

 among plants can be traced, however, in the later Herbals, as 

 they became less medical and economic and more definitely 

 botanical. Thus, in the well-known work of Leonhard Fuchs 

 (Fuchsius), De Historia Stirpium. Commentarii, 1 542, the plants 

 are described in alphabetical order, without any reference to 

 their mutual relation. But in Kyber's edition of Jerome Bock's 

 (Tragus) De Stirpium Nomenclatura, etc., Commejitariorum Libri 

 Tres, published in 1552 (with a preface by Conrad Gesner), there 



