XXX11 INTRODUCTION. 



while the Chapters contain Genera and 

 Species : so that the whole book looks 

 wonderfully like the modern arrangement, 

 and it requires some attention to discover 

 that the difference is great. Gaspar Bauhin 

 had indeed the genius of a natural classi- 

 fier ; but he could not shake himself al- 

 together free from literary traditions, and 

 it happens occasionally that his grouping 

 is guided by the conventional area of a 

 name and not by a common nature. Still, 

 there are whole tracts of natural verity 

 in this marvellous work, some families 

 almost entire ; and if we find Eay by and 

 bye treating of Monocotyledons and Dico- 

 tyledons, we must allow that the hint was 

 already latent in Gaspar Bauhin's dis- 

 tribution ; for his first two books contain 

 the Monocotyledons as at present under- 

 stood, with hardly any admixture. He 

 had sifted and verified and taken the best 

 from the fathers of modern Botany, such 

 as Fuchs and Lobel, though he had missed 

 the more penetrating thoughts of Caesal- 

 pinus. This Pinax Theatri Botanici 

 was only the outline of a system, which he 



