The Evolution of Botany. 177 



the seeds as a basis for his classification, which form of ar- 

 rangement was retained by most of his followers. Caesal- 

 pinius opened a new epoch in botany ; he cared little for 

 the description of individual plants, but rather sought to 

 generalize from the individual. He aspired to a classifica- 

 tion which recognized the internal nature of the plant, so to 

 speak, and arrived, through Aristotelian philosophic deduc- 

 tion, to the conviction that a natural classification must be 

 based upon the organs of fructification. His system contains 

 as a consequence a series of most unnatural groups. 



A little later the brothers Bauhin contributed a goodly 

 share to the cause of botany. While John Bauhin, espe- 

 cially in his work Historia Plantarum Universalis, supported 

 the views of Lobelius, and therefore aspired to a natural 

 classification based upon general external similarity that is, 

 for instance, including in the class " trees " all plants that 

 partook of the nature of a tree, including in another class all 

 the grasses, in another all the ferns, irrespective of any other 

 similarity than that of external appearance his brother, 

 Caspar Bauhin, not only increased the number of known 

 plants by his investigations and discoveries, but also cor- 

 rected the chaos existing in the very confusing synonymic of 

 the time. The latter endeavored in his work Phytopinax 

 to present a synopsis of all plants known up to that time, 

 1596 ; and in a later work, 1623 published the names of 6,000 

 plants with their many synonyms. The discovery of Amer- 

 ica more than a century before largely increased the num- 

 ber of known plants which were also included in the latter 

 work. 



Botanical enthusiasm ran high just at that time, and 

 botanical knowledge spread rapidly, especially among the 

 learned classes, who began to add botany to the branches 

 taught in the higher schools. The universities had before 

 that taught it. Botanical travels were undertaken by in- 

 terested individuals, and scientific organizations sent out 

 botanical expeditions to study the floras of surrounding 

 countries. Clusius explored nearly the whole of Europe, 

 and P. Albini most of the Orient, both with much success. 



Clusius was one of those scientists who, after the Kef orma- 

 tion, rescued the various departments of knowledge from the 

 spirit of the old scholasticism, and taught that true science 

 was the study of Nature herself, and not the study of the 

 whimsical notions and theories of the old school. He was 

 one of those reformers who instituted a practice of investi- 

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